


Sometimes, just sometimes

by Moonshape



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Picard, Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Angsty Start, BDSM, Canon Queer Character, F/F, Friendship is a beautiful thing, Happy Ending, Hopeless heroines, Lesbians in Space, Love Wins, No Lesbians Die, Post-Endgame, Queers in Space, Shameless Smut, Space elves are precious, The longest thing I've ever written on here, Timey-Wimey, Yearning and Longing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:40:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 27
Words: 23,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23580217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moonshape/pseuds/Moonshape
Summary: Been watching Star Trek: Picard and enjoying Seven's glo up altogether more than is acceptable.  This begins immediately after the end of the first (currently only) Picard series.
Relationships: Kathryn Janeway & Deanna Troi, Kathryn Janeway & Tuvok (Star Trek), Kathryn Janeway/Seven of Nine, Raffi Musiker & Seven of Nine, Raffi Musiker/Seven of Nine, Seven of Nine & Naomi Wildman
Comments: 257
Kudos: 116





	1. Seven - 2398

**Author's Note:**

> Hope y'all enjoy Seven being an angsty ball of super-angst.  
> I know some of us have more time to read/write than usual and/or could use the distraction at the moment. Stay safe <3

Unbelievable, this endless pain that refuses to dissipate. I wake up in the ghost of an embrace, a soft haze outside of time and space. The longer I take to crash back to consciousness, the worse the stab of disappointment. I knew I wouldn't survive her, even at the time. But now, after all these years - _really_?

My mind clears but the ache persists. Not desire for the soft arm around my shoulders, the warm comfort of my dream. This is something deep, primal, and ravenous. Every single part of me is crying out for her damn touch - running through my hair, on my lips, between my legs. Against my own better judgement, I let my hand wander, pretending it’s simply a physical need I am addressing. The satisfaction lasts barely a minute - disgust at my own weakness eclipses it immediately. Never again. Never again - just like the last time, and the many, many before that. Sometimes, when I am very angry, and sometimes when I am not, I think about hurting her, about revenge. But what purpose would it serve? I don’t believe, even for a minute, that it would be possible to redress the balance. How can you inflict the right kind of pain on someone who has proven they can simply disconnect from their emotions? Impossible.

We were moving in opposite directions, unable to even speak each other’s language. The tipping point still haunts me - the fact that I can’t pinpoint it, even when I do have the strength to relive the memories in painful technicolour. When was the exact moment that friendship tipped over into the potential of something else, something dangerous and unimaginable?

Falling in love is in the simplest of looks, in a room full of people - the secret code of two who already have a shorthand, a cipher of understanding. It is the lingering feeling which remains, unbidden, after the doors have closed and the lights dimmed. It is like a child acquiring language – new names for new feelings, and daring, for the first time, to utter words which spell out histories of pain. 

Love is the friendship that comes before: laughter over misunderstandings; disagreements, violent disagreements. Then making peace, and disagreeing some more. Growing to rely on and need each other enough to put all that aside. Love is talking about everything. And about nothing at all. It is voicing the nightmares and unleashing the demons, letting fears breathe out in the open for the first time in a lifetime. Love is standing, quite alone, in front of someone, and allowing them to see your inner darkness. 

Love is knowing you are falling, and being unable to stop it. It is building the road as you walk it, terrified, and wondering if you should be doing everything differently. It’s knowing you can’t do it any other way. And so, somehow, with her, loving was losing, time and again, mainly to myself. It was risking everything and knowing true joy, only to be left broken,and irreparable. 

It is both the beginning and the end, the reason for and the result of everything.

And sometimes, it is not enough. 


	2. Janeway - 2377

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Abandon all hope of fluff, ye who enter here. Angst, angst and angst. Also, angst.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, I can never really believe that people read my writing on here and are kind enough to give kudos or even comment. So, THANK YOU and, if you can, keep letting me know what you think. Makes this writer's little heart very happy indeed :)))))

I am used to this solitary darkness, the aching loneliness and vague despair of insomnia. Tonight, though, this is something else - the tipping point, the line in the sand, the other inane metaphors we humans use to try and convey the screaming but silent roar inside our own heads. That second when we know we have to stop, to change direction. To run away, before it becomes inevitable. Before she becomes inescapable.

Days, weeks and missions hurtle past, grinding against the very fibres of my nerves. Seven is always there, no longer a part of the background of my life, my command. She has become the shining, pulsating centre of everything - the only thing that deserves my full attention, the only reason to pull myself out of bed. The only harbinger of real, pure joy.

We play velocity and I can barely look at her even when I can’t stand to look away. Brutally competitive, focused, and panting - this is how she most often appears in my dreams. And in my fantasies. I imagine leaning across and licking the beads of sweat off her skin, slowly. The surprise and arousal in her eyes. Everything that follows. 

I become busy at the points in the week when we usually play. I resume other social engagements with different crew members. I stretch out the time between us, between when we see each other.

She delivers reports in astrometrics, hands behind her back, rigid. So assured in her own knowledge and abilities. I imagine being the one to break down that poise. Step by step, kiss by kiss. Touch by excruciating touch. I lie in bed and ache to hold her, to be marked by her nails on my back and thighs, to feel her clench around my fingers and then collapse into my arms.

I invent tasks and duties to keep her occupied and distant. To keep her from me, from this burning that does not ease. I let the space between us grow. 

I feel worse, not better.

Seeing her less, senior staff meetings become a nightmare. The sight of her is now so raw that I can feel it physically: a freezing hand squeezing the insides of my chest; my stomach suddenly a living entity of its own; the undeniable shock of desire between my thighs. Sometimes I do not know if seeing her is like drowning or if it is more like the frighteningly fresh breath of air in my lungs after coming up from under the water. I wonder how many of them in the room can see through my bravado. I will her to look at me, to know. To sense anything at all from this shell of a human being. She doesn’t.

I hide myself in the familiar guise of the consummate, commanding captain. Shorten the agendas, allow no space for discussion. I feel the professional gulf between us evolve and settle into something solid, and unmovable. 

I hurt.

We still, sometimes, sit late into the night in my quarters. I look up at her from my chair as she starts to speak, confident and secure that she has my full focus. She just fucking stands there, as though paused in time. She doesn’t flinch as she contradicts me, swoops in on my thoughts and rearranges them to suit her purpose in every discussion. Order from chaos. 

I feel as though I am Scheherazade. As though I might die if I stop talking. The danger of what might be said or done in those dead, quiet spaces could tear us both to pieces. I begin to fear myself when we are alone. Imagine how she would move under me, how she would possess me, how I would give up everything, in a second, to be hers.

And so I start to weave words in my head and my head alone. They are the words which I could never stand to tell her - as I wake in the cold and bright of every new morning, as I make cups of coffee so strong they thaw the subconscious haze of sleep mixed with infatuation. As I write and edit, and skim through endless personnel reports. As I join in the banter on the bridge, make my lonely, hollow decisions, laugh, hold meetings, try and fail to rest. Even as I talk to her, I picture us in other conversations and in other lives, in what-ifs and maybes and never-will-bes. And as I sleep, I start to weave dreams to protect her, to keep her safe forever. Most of all to keep her safe from me. 

I stop the late night sessions. Slowly, the only way I can stand to wean myself off her, over time. Each step further away is its own torture. Each wrings out my heart with the finality of death.

We talk now only in front of others, only about work and duties. It is meaningless. It is empty. The heat of emotions once between us cools to a tolerable, frozen horror. A dark, unfeeling chasm. Then an abyss. 

Never again crossable.


	3. Raffi - 2399

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just the start of what happens to my brain when it turns out some of your fave ever Trek characters (new and old) are canonically queer. A lot of internal screaming, and a bucket load of smut - that's what happens. 
> 
> There’s gonna be some time jumping as we carry on with this one, so strap in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m updating tags as I go but they are (currently) a bit ahead of the chapters I’m posting. Also, yes - I am apparently making this both a massive smut-fest AND an excuse to play with many of my very favourite characters in all of Trek in one place. 
> 
> In this chapter, please particularly enjoy the part where I unsubtly list only some of the *MANY* things I truly love about Raffi :p

There’s a trust that's been there from the very beginning. Implicit, unspoken, but undeniably present. And an edge, even to our most throwaway of exchanges; that promising, silent ripple of hot tension no one else quite picks up on. 

Being able to see through others is something I'm well used to - something that comes so automatically I wish, most of the time, I could turn it off at will. But it's the price you pay for too much training, for too many years among Romulans, and for too little faith in humanity. Or any other species for that matter. There's some of that in Seven, too. Her ability - honed, I can tell, over years of missteps and miscalculations - to size people up and know where they stand. To Know what that will mean for her. Neither of us are accustomed to having the tables turned - to being the one read, not the only doing the reading. I’d forgotten how it feels when someone signals, quietly, that they’ve really been looking, and so they’ve really seen you.

I've been called many things, some of them even quite accurate - intelligent, stubborn, brave, caring, prickly. More recently, and more astutely: reckless; adrift; damaged beyond repair. So long since someone has let me know, wordlessly that they see even a glimpse of the other parts of me. That she would call me capable, brilliant and desirable. That she can hold it all within the image she’s constructed of me - the chaotic, the feminine, the unbroken. The frighteningly alive.

What is it I see, so easily, in her? That seemingly naturally but so carefully practiced swagger - the kind that dog-whistles to other queer women across half a galaxy, the kind that made me immediately lean in, unseen and bite my lip, hard. I see how she does what is right, time and time again, so often at her own, terrible expense. And I see those rare yet breath-taking moments of levity and humor so sharp and astute. I see the effort it takes for her to laugh, the defiance in the face of everything that’s happened to her. I see how, like me, she can’t help but wear her pain near the surface. 

And I see the quiet, dangerous power inside of her, coiled tight like a spring, aching to be released. A power that calls out to something deep inside of me, that invites me to experience its potential, unleashed in all its glory. 

So I am only a little surprised - but more than a little intoxicated feeling - when she strides over, leans on the back of my chair and, in a low voice, throws out a casual comment that, in reality, is anything but. 

“You seemed quite comfortable back there, Musiker.” Her voice is dripping with open flirtation and it’s a split second choice - engage, or let the moment pass. I spin around, slowly, and lean back, waiting with the barest hint of a smile. Knowing exactly what I am doing, my choice made before she even spoke. “You know your way around a pair of handcuffs, I take it.” 

I had noticed it - how could I not - when I lent in behind her that day and snapped them shut. So close, I missed nothing - not how earthy and enticing she smelt, not how her breathing changed, the nearer I was. Not how, even mostly turned away from me, I could see the colour rise in her cheeks, nor how that small, risky crackle of electricity ignited between us, ever present since. 

And now here we are. I look at her face and I’m all in. No question. 

I hold her gaze before I speak, neither of us looking away - the sexiest game of chicken I’ve ever played. And then I tell the whole truth: “I most certainly do, Seven. Although, I should say...” I pause to look at her lips. I can’t help it, “......only from the other side.” And there they are - the physical reactions she makes absolutely no attempt to hide: dilated pupils; a sharp inhalation; fists suddenly clenched by her sides with the promise of what I’ve just said. Just in case I haven’t got the message, she takes my cue, exactly as I’ve given her permission to, sitting back in my chair like this, legs wide open in front of her. She takes it all in. Those piercing blue eyes sweep over every inch of my body, her gaze starving and feral. My heart pounds, a wild animal suddenly come alive inside my chest. I feel the almost forgotten but once so familiar thrill of power wash over me - the exhilaration of holding it and relinquishing it, at the same time. 

She still hasn’t spoken but her face is saying everything I need to hear, and more. When she does, I’m not even listening anymore. Her eyes are still on me, filled with such brazen, undisguised lust that every millimeter of my body is screaming for her touch. I consider, crazily, begging her to take me right here, right now. And her expressions says she can read my mind. We smile, the only subtle acknowledgement that the balance of power between us has shifted again, that we are both relishing this.

“Find me then. When you’re done with things here,” she gestures vaguely at the console next to my chair. I haven’t given it a thought since I felt her presence behind me, rendered me more or less incapable of thinking about anything else. She’s speaking over her shoulder now, deliberately forcing me to strain in order to to catch the words. “Fortunately for you, I’m used to being on the other side of the handcuffs, too.” It’s more than a confirmation or admission. It’s a promise - loud and clear, reverberating through my body. Settling in my very core. 

I do find her, later, and tell her I’ve never had this conversation before without an existing level of intimacy. She laughs, tells me she’d wondered how to raise the same point. When we’re talked out, the shot of whiskey we share later burns my throat and I leave it at one - another promise, this time to myself. A drop of amber glistens on her lips and, as she reaches out to link her fingers with mine, I wonder how long I'll have to wait to feel those hands and that mouth all over my body claiming me, rough and relentless.


	4. Seven - 2399

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (1) This is one of the the smuttier things I’ve written. Bear that in mind before you pollute your innocent mind with this chapter ;)  
> (2) Also - as the tags say - some “BDSM” (also see notes, *please* lovely readers.) If you’re not into reading that, skip this chapter and the next one.  
> (3) Y’all been warned. Twice :p

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, gang :))   
> Did you even have time to miss me?!
> 
> V important side note:   
> Talking about "BDSM" as a whole is a bit like talk about "sex" as though it's a single, homogeneous entity which is one single, prescribed list of practices/preferences for everyone who does it. It ain't.   
> That means that when it comes to “BDSM” - I write only about some of the things which are within the scope of my own personal experience because that's where I hold enough knowledge to do so comfortably and accurately.

Seven - 2399

I wake up, and I smile. I don't remember the last time that happened. Has it...ever happened since Icheb?

Soft, gentle fingers are running down my back, and I can feel their warmth even through the cotton of my t-shirt. I can hear what they are asking. 

"Raffi." I hear her breath catch as I say her name, but her hand stays on me and I don't move away. Instead I close my eyes and lean slightly into her touch, feeling no shame at such an act of vulnerability.

I want to play with her - like a cat with a very, very willing mouse. I want to hold her down and make her scream and do everything I have already imagined, everything she has told me she wants. I know that I will. But for now, we have all the time in the world and I let her lift my hair slowly out of the way and kiss the back of my neck. I let us both have this first ever moment of careless, easy intimacy together. I let myself admit to myself quite how much I want it - every bit as much as what will follow. 

I was the one who came here - to her - last night. Her room, her territory, her bed, as we’d agreed. She kissed my cheek, once, chaste and warm against my skin, before taking my hand to lead me to the bed. I knew that she could read the same exhaustion in my face which I saw in hers. I came here, then, only to sleep, to lie beside her and, maybe, to dream. Still wearing vests and shorts, as we’d agreed. I didn't reach out and touch her, even when I wanted to brush her hair away from her cheek. Even when our faces were so close I could feel her breath on my lips. She smiled and stretched, pulling the covers up over my body to keep me warm and it was a gesture so carelessly thoughtful that I wanted to take her in my arms and lull her to sleep. I didn't. This was what we had agreed. We had agreed to wait until we woke up together in this bed. To hold off until morning on starting something we knew we would finish. To spend the night side by side, feeling each other's calm presence, even in sleep. Nothing more. 

Until now.

I break the spell. But only in order to cast a different one - a new one that I can feel us both waiting for, holding our breaths. 

I turn around, grasping her wrists in mine and I stare into the dark, beautiful pools of her eyes, their pupils suddenly huge. Mine, I know, are the same. I can feel her pulse underneath my fingers, racing, as she nods her desire and her permission. I grip her wrists tighter, much tighter, and she struggles against me in vain. Interesting, but somehow unsurprising that in bed too she is a fighter. Even when she knows that resistance is beyond futile. I can feel her enjoying my enjoyment as she forces me to reposition myself so that I can control her arms and haul her upwards, towards the head of the bed. When I look at her, I see such trust in her eyes that it takes my breath away. I smell her arousal as keenly as I feel my own and I remember, who is really holding the power here - that she controls me, even as I control her. 

I direct her to undress with my nothing more than eyes and she makes quick work of it, before offering me her wrists again, her head bowed in supplication. I have to work now, to focus on putting her exactly where I want her. I know that if I risk looking at her body properly, I'll come undone. And I need to be the one winning this game. For now. 

The silk ties I've brought to restrain her look so beautiful against her skin when I start to knot them that I almost pause a moment to adore my handiwork. Almost. There is a pleading in her eyes I can’t easily ignore and I hear my own voice, hard: "Speak."

"Tighter, please. Please, Seven. Make them tighter." 

"I assure you, you cannot move until I release you." 

She looks at me, stretched out on the bed, her hard, delicious arm muscles already taut as I straddle her body to re-check the ties I’ve just placed around her ankles. She’s going nowhere but I realize, suddenly, that isn't her concern. 

"You want me to mark you." She swallows, nods, but it wasn't a question. "You doubt me?" She starts to speak and I stop her mouth with my metal-covered hand. She moans at the contact and it is so raw - so honest - that I feel it as tangibly as if it were her hand between my legs. "No more noise from you. I choose how I mark you, Raffaela. And where." She shivers and I know what she needs. "As well as when." 

I finally, finally let myself take in the full glory of the sight in front of me - her long, lean legs and the way her muscles twitch already in anticipation. Her stomach - firm but soft, dying to be explored. Bare breasts with hardened, neglected nipples, the beautiful face wrought with unsatisfied desire, and the tell-tale patch of moisture already visible on the bed sheets which forces me, for a moment, to look away so I can regain some self composure. 

"Which is now", I say and make good on my promise - staining her arms, legs and neck with the beginning of bruises where I suck at her, drawing her most sensitive skin into my mouth. My teeth scratch and tear at her torso, at her abdomen, even at the flawless skin of breasts. I thrill at her struggle to keep silent, to please me by following this simple instruction. And I grow wetter every second at how hard it is for her to keep from crying out in pleasure, and in pain. I pull back, after an eternity, and she is panting, pressing her centre down, hard against the bed. Desperate for more.   
Her skin is a battlefield after a massacre, and there are several distinct, bleeding tooth marks across her shoulders. When I look up at her face, her eyes are dancing with such profound ecstasy that it almost frightens me. 

I feel invincible.

"You can make noise when we continue, Mussiker. I know you won't be able to help yourself." I don't know if the words coming out of me are a challenge, a threat or a fact.

Whichever it is, I’m correct. I kneel back so that I can admire the view and enter her, hard, with three fingers. The noise she makes is so loud, so real that it could make me come, right here, if she continues it much longer. But I’ve got other plans. Avoiding anywhere else - I don't want her to come too soon - I set a brutal rhythm with my hand, pumping in and out, never missing a chance to curl my fingers up relentlessly against her g-spot. Still, I feel her arch her hips against me, needing even more, making me wonder if I can put my whole hand inside her. Until an even better idea presents itself and I reach up with my Borg-enhanced hand, resting my palm casually, open on her throat, wanting to measure her reaction before continuing. 

She doesn’t flinch - in fact I feel an unmistakable tightening begin to start around my fingers and hear her panting breaths become quicker and quicker. So I let her let me gently hold her throat a little tighter as I guide her with my fingers to the most spectacular orgasm. It is hot, liquid and so, so loud. I keep her there, my hand dictating the intensity of the shocks and aftershocks until it feels like an eternity has passed. And when I look at her, brushing the sweat-soaked hair back off her forehead, she is radiant. The emotions of a whole world are in her eyes, the lines of finger-shaped bruises already blossoming on her neck. I realise that tears are running down my face - the intensity of my existence in this moment overwhelming.


	5. Raffi - 2399, the same night.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm not done with Raffi and Seven yet, and they're certainly not quite done with each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As in the last chapter - some mild BDSM..... and *please* see my previous note about how I write this kind of thing. 
> 
> If you're enjoying this story, as always, I'd love to hear from you because...I'm needy. Lol, no, I mean....because that makes it all worthwhile ;pppp

I find that I want to taste her tears - to catch them on my tongue before they slip away forever. A part of me is desperate for her to release me - to let me touch her, to do anything she wants. But I know, instinctively, that we're not done here. That neither of us want to be. She hasn't removed her hand, just changed the pressure to ensure it's bearable but my hypersensitive nerves are screaming out for mercy and, as she rubs her thumb slowly across my clit and again curls her fingers, still inside me, it's almost too much. 

But she waits, like before, and she reads me. I haven't used the safe word and she trusts I will, every bit as much as I trust her. So when I tell her I can't come again, so soon, she takes it for what it is - an invitation. A challenge.

There is the brief reprieve of soft silk loosening from around my limbs and I’m released. She flips me over onto my front and s soon as I'm in this position, sharp desire pools almost immediately. I can feel it moving through me as though I haven't just come, spectacularly, screaming her name. She rakes her nails down my back, alternately scratching so hard she must be drawing blood, and then kissing each and every one of these wounds better. How does she understand, already, exactly how I like to be hurt and how I need to be soothed?

As she slides her fingers even deeper into me again, my senses kick into overdrive. Her hot breath caresses my ear with the only command I don't know if I can obey now: "You will come, Raffaela, only when I say you can. Not later. And definitely not sooner." Before I can even moan, I feel the delicious weight of her against my ass, her naked core drenching the skin there as she slides over my taut muscles, so close already I can tell she's having to hold herself back. Her fingers fill me and torment me - the tight, hot feeling where I’m clenching around her knuckles becomes exactly the blurred boundary between pleasure and pain that I crave in my every fantasy.

Afterwards, we lie, trembling in each other's arms and I’m surprised either of us an move an inch. The ache between my legs and the tender bruises all over my body are going to be glorious tomorrow - every step a reminder of how it was to feel and hear her come, to fight to hold myself back until she let me do the same.

Seven, I think, is convinced she’s the one who needs to care for me, make sure I'm ok. Often, she might be right, and I can't wait to find out, ideally through plenty of experimentation. This time, though, I know it's the opposite and I keep her wrapped in my arms until the pumping adrenaline and raging hormones have stopped roaring through her veins. Until she’s kissed my every bruise and bite mark, spent every ounce of her remaining emotional energy. And then I hold her until she falls asleep murmuring happily, nuzzling against my shoulder like a child. 


	6. Kathryn - 2401

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Short but (hopefully) sweet hint of where this story is eventually going (i.e. LOVE WINS) brought to you thanks to the joy of time-jumping chapters. And, yes - in this ship, we *really* like a gear (and pairing) change 😉

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is for all those kittens who need their J/7 fix 🥰 To reassure you that these two are basically *always* gonna end up together in my head, however we get there.  
> As always, comments/kudos/thoughts/random reactions v much appreciated 🤗

It’s as natural as breathing; I lean into Seven, resting my cheek against her chest and feeling the comforting, possessive weight of strong arms around my back, mirroring my own wrapped around hers. I would be content to die, right now, like this. I think I’ve never been happier until she presses her face into my hair and kisses me on the top of my head. I don’t know what to do with myself - I think neither of us do - so we just stand there, relishing the safety and warmth of each other. **Finally.**

It’s only when I feel a nagging pain in my hands that I realise how tightly I’ve been gripping onto the fabric of her clothes this whole time, terrified to let go, as though I might disappear if I do. She looks at me and, as though it were the simplest thing in the world, takes my hands in hers. Maybe it is this simple - maybe we don’t need to rewrite the whole of time for the universe to make sense. 

I could drown, willingly, in her eyes and I can’t bear to look away, even when she slowly lifts my fingers up to her lips. I feel the warm, perfect shape of her mouth against my skin. Her hot, shuddering breath. She drags her lower lip over the palest, most sensitive areas of my palms. I think I’ve died. I can’t speak. That, apparently, makes two of us. 

She runs her hand up the back of my neck but doesn’t move any closer. Parts of my body which have been asleep for a thousand years wake up, screaming at the memory of how she used to make me feel, just be being in the same room. At the reality of how she is making me feel, this second, right in front of me, so undeniably real.

“I want to kiss you, Kathryn.” It’s more breath than voice, and I feel the impact of each word as though they come from inside my own body. “But I don’t think I can bear it. Not yet. I’m.....sorry.”

I pull her against me again, hard, wanting to crawl under her clothes, under her skin. For now this is enough - so much more than enough. To be this close, to have her in my arms.

“It’s been forever already, Seven. I’m a patient woman. I can wait.” It’s not exactly the truth and when we lock eyes, she knows it too. But we’re both grinning, and right now, I don’t care about anything except this perfect moment. 


	7. Tuvok - 2381

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Tuvok is the friend we all want and need in our lives *not for the first time*  
> and  
> Janeway is the victim of her own own choices, her total lack of ANY self-care and her complex issues with guilt/pride *VERY much not for the first time either - don't worry it's one of the reasons we love your deeply flawed ass, Katie*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think, guys? As always, my writing is heavily sponsored by your comments and I've never tried to Tuvok before. It was quite a challenge to try and get his voice, and no one beta reads for me, so some brain fuzz today may mean there are more mistakes than usual :o  
> But at least I did get to have a dig at silly humans ;))))))

She is one of the only humans I know of with the true capacity to understand why an entire race of beings would actively refuse to be at the mercy of their own emotions. I would not say that this is a positive attribute. Rather, I am deeply and viciously aware that she fully comprehends the confounding breadth and terrifying depths of feelings. The kind which might make one’s whole civilisation seek refuge in logic for all eternity. She is also the only non-Vulcan with whom I have ever developed a true, unbreakable bond. These are the reason why, even for me, it is immeasurably difficult to see her like this. Although I am barely surprised that this shadow of my friend is what remains since she exiled herself from happiness.

Captain Janeway acknowledged a long time ago that I would always be one step ahead of her own thoughts. This hypothesis has yet to be proven wrong. But it was not only I. Anyone could see the powerful, undeniable bond shared between our Captain and Seven of Nine. Their love for each other - to borrow an expression from human parlance - was as plain as the nose on my face. Not only to me, but to absolutely everyone fortunate enough to find themselves in Captain Janeway’s inner circle. Not even Mr Paris dared raise it as a matter for jest or idle gossip - a testament in itself to the depth of emotions involved.

These have only grown stronger without the daily contact with their cause. To put it bluntly, Kathryn is in great pain. We are now able, to some extent, to meditate together. She is a capable and willing student, and believe I have had some measure of success in aiding her. I can, however, only create the space within which she can seek control and understanding. I cannot undo her past decisions, cannot force her to change her fundamental nature. And I cannot cure her of this sorrow. 

No one lives how we do, travels as far as we have and reaches this stage of life completely unscathed, and undamaged - this is who we are, what we do. Usually, though, I would not expect this to be so wholeheartedly self-inflicted. 

From the day she began to distance herself from Seven, there was not a single one of us who could not, in some way, sense the misery. From both of them. It was impossible to remain unaware of it, or to be unaffected by the blatant needlessness of such suffering. The Captain would not even permit me to speak of it to her for two years. Even then when I did, I took pains to approach it through my own experience, and from a range of angles. I find that humans often need very careful handling

My wife T’Pel and I share something not unlike Kathryn and Seven. I feel it there - something safe and solid beneath my feet - always present, the fine but straight line underscoring my entire life. It is highly illogical not to embrace such a unique connection - one which many find elusive. I cannot know the contents of her thoughts when she did so, but I can speculate. The thought of losing something so profound would be enough to terrify any human, even one not used to acting pre-emptively for her own protection. Or perhaps she was acting for Seven’s. Or out of some misguided attempt to be honourable because of her position as our Captain and, for a time, as Seven’s mentor. Admirable, but only up to a point. Logic dictates there was no reason why such a hurdle could not be overcome, with time and with - as they would have had - the full support of the crew. Perhaps her own sense of identity was fundamentally undermined by the revelation she could - did - love a woman like this. No amount of human ingenuity and development can remedy their innate difficulties in accepting the fact that their identities are not set in stone for a lifetime. Perhaps she simply did not know how catastrophic this decision would be, for both of them.

I know that she will begin work soon with a counsellor, something she seems oddly ashamed of. I believe she considers this some kind of weakness. There is no logic in this very human flaw of exempting yourself from your own rules; Kathryn Janeway is a woman who looks after herself in a way she would never permit others under her command to be treated. She views herself and her decisions with the harsh, critical eye of a bitter enemy. I do not believe she has even been willing to confide in anyone else about the appointment she has made to seek help, something she would have encouraged anyone else she cared about to do long ago. I do not envy her counsellor their role in working with my oldest friend. Even within Star Fleet, she is one of the proudest, most stubborn, and most undeniably brilliant officers one could hope to work with. But now it is like a light has gone off inside her, as though she is somehow......diminished.


	8. Deanna - 2399

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I find it unacceptable that Deanna Troi and Kathryn Janeway can exist in the universe and not meet properly :p  
> I find it inconceivable that, when they did, there wouldn't be something of a spark there (I mean come ON) ;DDD  
> Plus Deanna knows all about true love, and she's the queen of calling people out. And that's how we find ourselves here :p

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, love to hear your thoughts on this chapter especially as, despite the fact I've only ever written J/7 because they are *everything*, my love for Deanna is forever ❤ as is my minor obsession with the word "imzadi". I'm a languages nerd as it is, my relationship is multilingual and there's a word we say a lot, which comes from my girlfriend's first language which has no emotionally resonant/nuanced translation into English in the right contexts. But guess what Betazoid word *does* work......you guessed it XD

The monitor glows, her face comes into sharp focus and she starts speaking immediately: “God, it’s really good to see you.”

“It’s really good to…,” I pause and her warm, conspiratorial smile diffuses the remains of any tension. “It’s really good to be seen.” And I mean it - I’ve always meant it. The way Kathryn looked at me, and the way I felt myself react to it spelt trouble and, eventually, the end of our professional relationship. The first rule of counselling is one of the most fundamental - if you realise you’ve got a a crush on your therapist, find a new one. And if you’re the empathetic therapist starting to develop even the teeniest of crushes on your client, get yourself the hell out of there. Even if it never is more than that - a spark of mutual attraction that made our encounters that little bit more thrilling than they should have been. 

“So, the time’s come for me to say something I always hoped I’d have the chance to.” Her face doesn’t betray even an inch of it, but fear is flowing off of her in waves. She must have some idea why I’ve contacted her after all this time - a message as cryptic as it was enthusiastic. But I don’t know where this conversation will go, and have to consciously relinquish the urge to try and control of it. I breathe in and ground myself - two feet on the ground, my back against the chair. “I know where she is, Kathryn. I know where she’s going, who she’s with - everything.” Even as I speak, I’m consciously creating a buffer between us - protecting myself against the strength of her emotions, wanting to respect her right to experience them in private. Gods know, I don’t want to feel the level of anguish and pain my words provoke, or to intrude in this moment. 

It’s a while before she feels safe to speak. “And what? You have so little faith in your own practice and that of your colleagues? And in me?” Hearing the anger in her own voice, she catches herself and meets my eyes, suddenly smiling genuinely. That quicksilver, uniquely Janeway change of emotional heading. “It’s been more than twenty years, Deanna. It was another life. I’ve done so much healing, and she must be a different person by now.”

“You know she is, Kathryn.” It comes out less gently than I intend but she does need to be confronted sometimes, this infuriating woman who sometimes won’t listen to anyone, least of all herself.

“Yes, ok. I’ve asked around. I used to ask around. I know she’s a different person. One who I’m sure has forgotten all about me.”

“How could that possibly be true?” I let the question hang in the air, knowing her well enough to sense there will be no answer. The channel between us is heavy with churning emotions - guilt, frustration, doubt. But lying under it all, I can feel a new, tiny but unmistakeable glimmer - that of hope. “And an unfaded scar which still troubles you when you’re tired, when your barriers are down,” I raise my finger to halt her interruption before she even get it out and she scowls. But then I’ve always been one of the only people who could stand firm under that famous Janeway stare. “A scar which you yourself still scratch away at, even when you don’t want to? That’s not what I’d call healing.” I can feel the palpable hurt it causes her, after all this time, even just to think of Seven.

“Isn’t it just exhausting to be so fucking wise all of the time, Deanna?” Only the slightest of cracks in her voice reveals how accurate the analogy I used really is. “I’m scared,” she says, and I know how much it takes for a woman like Kathryn Janeway to admit such a thing. 

“I know you are.”

“And….listen, it’s not about me. I’m the only one who should have to continue to deal with the consequences of my own actions...with the mistakes I’ve made and selfishness of my choices. With the fact that I couldn’t face up to something so confronting it shook me to my core, with the reality of my own cowardice…. .” She sighs. “We‘ve been though this all before. I’ve done more than enough already. She just deserves to be….”

“Finish your sentence, Katie.” She knows, however hard she pretends not to, that I can’t actually read her mind.

“She deserves to find all the possible happiness she can in this life, and to be left alone to truly embrace it. The last thing she needs is Kathryn Janeway swooping in after two decades to assuage my own conscience. Again.”

“Would we be here if I thought that was the case?”

“I imagine not.” The shape of her feelings and thoughts has changed, subtly - there is a slight openness now, almost an inclination to actually take in what I’m saying, and less of a desire to instinctively push back against it. Finally.

“And am I always right?”

She takes a slow mouthful of coffee from the mug she’s cradling, a good sign. Even during our most intense sessions, this usually signalled a gear shift, a slight lowering of her guard. “No, not even you. Not always.” I laugh, raise an eyebrow. “But - I can admit it - with irritating regularity.” 

There’s little else to say. It’s her move now and, even if I were ten times more empathetic, I couldn’t say for sure if she’ll make it. “Go and see her, Kathryn,” I urge, one last time. “It might kill you both, but not as surely as it will if you pass up this second chance.”

When we close the link, I take a minute to sit in the quiet darkness and collect my thoughts. I know this is the only part I can play in her story. They have to do the rest for themselves, these inimitable, wounded, spectacular women. We make our own destiny, but not everyone is able to put it all on the line to be with their  _ imzadi,  _ and not everyone is as blessed as I have been.

But if anyone deserves it and if anyone has a chance, it’s Kathryn Janeway. 


	9. Seven - 2378

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 💔 - That's it. That's the summary.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a tough week but returning to the tatty first draft of this chapter I'd written a while ago made me happy...and I'm quite happy with this one :))))  
> Comments and Kudos are always mega-appreciated, lovely readers!

The space my own rage takes up frightens me. Some days, it overcomes even my hurt at what I think could be very reasonably termed her betrayal. The consistent pain of it stays with me through the most mundane and complex of tasks. The fact that she will not engage with me - hasn’t even been willing to respond adequately to my most simple enquiries after her health - makes me want to....scream. Or to throw things. I have felt such anger before, but never caused purely by the seemingly ordinary actions of one person. I would once have considered such interpersonal connections and their influence irrelevant. Now, it is the only thing in my existence. 

The brightness, the energy, the…..joy she brings - brought - into my life was something I would never have denied. Still, even I did not realise how the shape of my days hinged around those moments I saw her, talked to her, spend in her presence. Even when we shared nothing more than a look, that comfortable smile of deep, intimate friendship. And of something so much more. Something I thought we had both acknowledged, even if not out loud.

There are those on Voyager who think me somewhat naïve but even I could not miss the meaning of the soft familiarity of her touch. Of how often she took the opportunity to put her hand on my arm, or my shoulder, or my leg - so much more than with the others on our crew, even Chakotay. I could not fail to notice that it was not only me who sought her out, day after day, with any excuse possible. And who changed immeasurably in her presence. This was though, to use a human idiom, entirely a “two-way street”. 

I felt her heartbeat quicken every time we were alone together, just as mine did. I heard her make casual excuses to prevent others from joining us when we wanted to be alone. I spotted these for what they were. I observed her pulling back, afraid, just as I was, to take a step closer to what we both so obviously wanted. I identified the perfect reflection of my own love, my own desire, my own need in her. It was there, looking back at me like my own face in the mirror. I am as sure about that as I have been about anything in my life as an individual, after my separation the Borg. 

I do not understand when everything changed. Or why. There is - or was - I believe no valid “why” at all.

I do not suppose any of it matters. She was my friend. And I loved her. And then she was no longer my friend. And still I love her. She began to treat me as though I was just another member of the crew, one she barely even knows. Could anything be worse? I would rather she had railed at me: shouted, swore - anything. We always fought like this, about life and about our differing philosophies, as well as about professional matters. It is - was - in some ways one of the solid bases of our relationship: this ability to air our opinions so openly and to contradict one another, without it every sabotaging our feelings for one another. The opposite was true - I never loved my Kathryn more than late at night, her cheeks flushed and her voice low but animated with the strength of whatever point she wanted to make. I never wanted to kiss her more than when she listened to me with such concentration on her face, grappling happily with our differences. Never one to shy away from anything.

Now, if I didn’t know her better, I would say she decided to.....take the easy way out. She slowly but simply erased herself from my life without even having the grace to tell me about it. No warning, no discussion, no explanation. Just absence. Terrible, lonely, aching absence.

When we arrive back in the Alpha Quadrant, I am so full of joy for Kathryn. Everything else ceases to exist, at least for a short time. I look at her face and I see such joy - an emotion which has been noticeably absent for what feels like an eternity.

For me, after this brief reprieve, it is hollow. The return signifies nothing - it is worse than meaningless. Kathryn was my home. 

Kathryn, so far away from me now - as distant as the Alpha quadrant once was - will always be my home. 


	10. Kathryn - 2386

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Somewhere out there, my soulmate is effing things up too" 🤣 (credit to a graphic from misery.unrequited I think...)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first of four chapters I've written somehow over the last few days. Dunno what happened to me 😅😅😅
> 
> And also, yes, I've decided to invert the trope of 'pointless unnamed female character exists only to further the story of male protagonist.' Smashing the patriarchy with Janeway is my favourite hobby 😎

I still wake up every day with the urge to contact her. Somehow, anyhow. It’s more than a good while since I’ve really had any idea where she is. How she is, what she’s doing. 

There is a guy. Vaguely. Deanna was not impressed, as brutally honest as always. Deliberate self-sabotage, she called it. Moving on, I countered. That worked about as well as I’d feared it would. She asks me regularly, still, why I come to see her. One day, out of nowhere, I decide to actually answer.

“Because you understand, Troi.” 

“I understand what?” She’s leaning in a little, the way she always does when she senses I’m willing to fully engage with this process. Willing to sit with her and allow my pain and regret to fill the room.

“You understand love. And me. The impossible decisions people like us sometimes have to make. What there was between me and Seven. What there still is. How it sits within me, as heavy as a fucking stone.” She is visibly surprised by this - both my ability and desire to define the core of our sessions, how I experience them. This is why she can call my stupid attempt at a fledging relationship out for what it is. Because she is, of course, right. 

He pops around one evening, quite spontaneously. A clear signal of interest, intent. We haven’t gotten very far yet with….well, anything really. He says I smell of cigarette smoke - guilty - and something he can’t identify and then tries to hold me. I feign tiredness….the understandable end-of-week fatigue of a Starfleet Admiral. How can I tell him that the untouchable memory of a memory sends more desire pulsing through my veins than I’ll ever feel for him? How can he know that, alone in my bed, I’m as light and heady as an eighteen-year-old cadet. That I still lie and fantasise about Seven - that she’s the one making me moan, setting me on fire, and keeping me from sleep hour after hour. I want him, in that moment to sense the transparency of my excuse, the magnitude of my betrayal at even daring to start something with him. To hate me so that I can hate him back. Easy. Too easy - there is no way he could ever hurt or resent me as much as I do myself.

“Can I replicate you anything at all?” He says. This poor, kind man in the wrong place at the wrong time. “Or do you want me to run you a nice bath?” Everything inside of me is screaming out for her: for Seven to be saying these words, to be holding me, taking me to bed. Loving me.

It’s over with him before it starts. At least Deanna is professional enough to never, ever gloat. To never say “I told you so”, regardless of how often she has cause.


	11. Deanna - 2384

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Deanna Troi, angst, Kathryn Janeway, eventual hope - "these are a few of my favourite things" as they say 😉

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're reading, please feel free to pour comments and kudos on this story if you like it. We writers are a needy bunch (●'◡'●)  
> I've been trying to get Deanna's voice right but I'm not quite sure about it....at some points it definitely strays into current (i.e. 21th century) therapist parlance 😏  
> Some counsellors/therapists and the people who train/supervise them, in really life as well as in Trek, are *absolute blessings* so the ending of this chapter I hope reflects how I feel about such humans/Betazoids etc. 💟

I’ve always found this human habit of referring to people as “broken” abhorrent. And yet she strains the limits of even my therapeutic vocabulary in this regard. That first day, I felt her long, long before I saw her. A kind of thankfully rare, astonishingly acute mess of pain. One which made me physically sick for a moment before I could erect a barrier strong enough to hold it at bay. Her face and voice when she did enter the room were what surprised me - no hint of what I could feel from her on display to anyone merely looking. Even for a Starfleet officer, such control is quite incredible. And deeply disturbing.

I remember us sitting there. Minutes pass in silence. There is no discomfort from her and I instinctively know she is comfortable with this quiet. That she won’t start until she’s ready. The level of nonchalance with which she finally speaks betrays years of practice: “I’ve made some absolutely rotten decisions. And,” she continues and pauses so long the single syllable almost starts to frighten me, “I keep getting lost in my own memories.”

“Can you tell me a little more what you mean by that?”

She sighs, but it is not in frustration. “It’s like a maze. I start to think, to recall - it feels normal to start with. Things come back to me, specific moments, memories - and I then just get.....stuck there. Like a bad dream, even though the memories aren’t unhappy ones.” 

I can feel it, that concept just below the surface she can’t quite articulate. “It’s about regret, if I understand you. You want to change something, or at least you wish you’d done something else in each of these memories?” She nods, and her face is suddenly incrementally more open. “You wish something was different. Or you’d been different.”

“Yes, and then I just can’t leave them alone in my mind.” The pain I felt initially still lies, dark and endlessly deep, under every word she speaks. But she smiles as well, and it’s as warm as the sun. “Can I tell you about them - the memories, I mean?” Her desire to share something personal is so eager, so heartfelt. This, I think, is the first glimpse I have of her as the person I will later understand she is - the Janeway they talk about, loved both as a captain and as a unique woman by her crew. She closes her eyes. 

“I’m lying, half-naked, on a sofa that smells of her. She was sat here all evening, inches from me. When I got tired, I lent back and she touched my leg so carelessly once I’d gotten comfortable. I don’t think she even noticed.

We both knew what would happen from the very, very beginning of any conversation about this evening. That the silent look of complicity in her eyes when I said: “Just bring the reports over and we can go through them together.” The unspoken - this is the only way we can justify this much time together. Without anyone else, so often, and so unapologetically.” 

A vague smile still plays around her lips, the contrast of it against the emotions I’m feeling from her is almost startling. I sense that she doesn’t understand how to continue. so I try. “If you stay in the memory, what do you want to happen next? Think of it like a daydream now - you control it, not the other way round. What do you want to do?”

“Honestly?”

“Always, Kathryn. That’s how you’re meant to try and be at all times with you counsellor.” My tone is playful, but I’m not joking and I feel it reach her, feel her accept it. 

“When she rests her hand on my thigh, I know exactly want I want to do. Second by second. To cover it with mine, gently, and entwine my fingers with hers. I look at her hands - looked at her hands all the time, every day back then. I imagine now how it would have felt to just hold them in mine, with no need to let go. No need to worry about the constant, low-level Captain’s concerns about whether someone would think I was overstepping, showing favouritism, crossing professional boundaries. All the things that exhausted my beyond anything I thought possible back then. That’s all I want in the memory - just to feel her warm skin on mine, to look into her eyes whilst we sit like that. More than anything, I want to have done it and not to have been so damn afraid.”

I look up at her. Her eyes are still closed, but there are tears already glistening on her cheeks. I’ve never been so overwhelmed by the fragility and hopelessness of a love like this in a counselling session. Never been witness to such depth of emotion around something entirely unrequited. It is such a deep, painful cut that I find myself almost wanting to shy away, professional obligations be damned. But she starts to speak again.

“There is another one. I see it - I relive it - every day. I wish….I don’t know.”

“It’s ok, Kathryn. We have time. Take a minute to feel your feet on the floor and drop anchor if you need to.” She breathes in deeply, and I’m amazed she’s the same woman who walked in at the start of the session. I understand that now she’s begun, she can no longer put the stopper back into the bottle of her own suffering.

“We’re in a shuttle. I’m petrified. I’d thought I would lose her and I don’t know what to do when she lowers the forcefield.....don’t know why I’ve knelt in front of her. Or why I don’t reach out and put things irrevocably right. Why I don’t do want I’m screaming out to. I’ve imagined it a million times inside my own head - kisses that would feel like nothing ever has before and gentle, gentle hands that seem, somehow, to know exactly what they’re doing. Being so held back by my own fear - it plagues me, even now. Every fucking second of every day.”

When we finish, I find, despite all my training, my professional experience, and well-established post-work self care routine, that it haunts me: the knowledge that she is out there in the world, alone, carrying the weight of this heartbreak. There is a moment when doubt both myself and my abilities. My own resilience in being able to hold space with her and work through it. But then I remember who I am and who she is and I know that we will keep going, as long as it takes.


	12. Kathryn - 2394

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kathryn is so very *WRONG* (I'd advise reading the following chapter immediately 😉)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeh, so I re-watched "The Voyager Conspiracy" because of The J/7 Shuttle Just-Kiss-Her-Already-You-Fool Catastrophe™ for this chapter and, seriously gang 😣😔💔😭 it breaks me a little. It is definitely in the same vein as the full quotation from which the title of this story comes: "Sometimes, just sometimes you love me too. Those times hurt the most" (Komal Kapoor, I believe.)
> 
> Also, since I decided to plot out this story properly (like a real person, for once) you'll notice it's gonna be 27 chapters long, apparently. Wish me luck (YIKES)!!

I take my showers as hot as I can physically stand to these days. Stretch, and watch the water running down my body, feel the rarely-acknowledged energy of simply being alive. Most days I feel every bit as fresh as I did twenty years ago on Voyager. I’m in damn good physically shape, and not just in that awful, patronising human cliché of “for my age”. I’m fitter than I ever was when starship command left no time or energy to care whether I ate and exercised well, or at all.

The luxurious, daily ritual of my hydro shower is also the only time I indulge myself enough these days to wallow a little in thoughts of her. And then, only sometimes. Rarely, even. It still hurts but the pain is an old one, well-worn. It fits well, with a familiarity that’s safe and almost comforting. After so long spent working through it with Deanna, I can finally take myself there without risk. And I know I’ll be able to navigate my way back, even alone.

I will never see Seven of Nine again. I’ve made my peace with the fact that I cannot make my peace with that. And I’ve made my peace with the fact that it means that my life - my story - will always somehow be incomplete. I was the woman who brought Voyager home. For some time, we became some kind of figureheads, symbols for anyone who had themselves ever felt lost. The fact that we found our way back to the Alpha quadrant was like a light to many, shining even in the darkest of times.

In reality, though, that was only took up a few years of the long, meandering journey of my life. We’d all like to say that our lives and our stories are important. And that they show something, mean something: the triumph of hope over despair; the enduring power of love. Most of all, we want our own story to show us the deep and undeniable significance of one human life. I am still able to find some measure of comfort in this, but not when it comes to anything outside of my professional life.

What I do know is this one, singular and vital truth: I let her go. I made the choice not once, but again and again, over and over. The last, most painful time, was when she lowered the forcefield between us and I came as close to confessing my love as I ever would. When we beamed back to the ship and I still couldn’t make myself say it, that was when I knew, definitively. Knew that I had l given up any hope I could remain in Seven’s life. I’d believed we would lose her forever that day and I realised I couldn’t bear to go through even a second of that of those emotions again. It had to be enough - it is enough - that she is alive, whole, and somewhere safe out there in the world, living a life she alone dictates. I know that we are infinitely better off without each other.

Deanna still disagrees with me, vehemently. And why shouldn’t she? This is something she can do, sometimes almost gleefully, now that she’s my friend, rather than my counsellor. It’s like a breath of fresh air, in fact, to have someone disagree with me so readily. I’ve never been under any illusions about how I come across to others, about the strength of my own personality. And we can say what we want about equality and this Federation we’ve laboured to build but there are still many who don’t do well in the face of a woman with some of my character traits. So it’s not only a joy but also a necessity to have someone hold me to account so often in my private life, just as Tuvok does in my professional one. 

But then Deanna is every bit the hopeless romantic, the kind who unironically says things like “never say never” and “there’s nothing to say you two won’t find each other again.” Why should she think any differently - if anyone has been witness to the reality of a love that’s spanned time and space against all odds, it is Deanna Troi. I’m wired differently, and whatever she does or says, not even such a counsellor or friend can make a dent in my stubbornness: I know that I will die before I ever see Seven of Nine again.


	13. Seven - 2401

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I can feel myself starting to shake and I wonder if she can see it; this second chance made incarnate in human form, right in front of me."  
> This chapter is set immediately *before* the one already published, dated 2401. Yes, I know - time jumps *everywhere* and I hope you're as here for the timey wimey as I am 🙃

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I enjoyed writing this chapter more than is acceptable, I've got to say 😄😄😄   
> I really hope you like reading it every bit as much. These two little muffins deserve every second of happiness so stick with this story and please leave some comments if you're enjoying it.

I see her. She stands there, as near and as unreachably far as the first time we encountered one another.

There is a gap in time where all I can feel is ice cold in my chest, as though my insides have been plunged into freezing water. I can’t breathe. Was she always so small? So unbearably beautiful? 

After a moment, my heart thaws. It is instant. She is a bright, burning light, melting everything it touches. Life flows back into me and I feel more in that second than I have for over twenty years. 

“Hello, Seven,” she says and I’m proud of myself for not flinching at the familiarity of her voice after all this time. It sounds, exactly as it does in my memory. Am I dreaming? I hope against hope that I’m not. 

“Are you really here, Kathryn? Are you really.....real?” I can’t believe how small my own voice sounds. How stupid I sound. But I look into her eyes, and I don’t care about that at all as she nods. 

I remember how angry I was at her, how I believed that she had damaged me irreparably. How I had never wanted to see her again. And how many hundreds of times I have imagined this moment in my head - have imagined screaming at her, hurting her in the million ways she hurt me. Making her feel the pain of it as I did. 

Instead her tentative, vaguely terrified smile hits me square in the chest. It makes me want to run the remaining few paces between us and take her in my arms, scoop her up and hold her, forever. And I realise that I’m a different person to the one who carried all that anger and hurt. I realise that I’ve come so far but also that I have known all along, somewhere deep down, that she had been doing the best she could. And that, even when she was heartbreakingly wrong, she still believed she was doing the right thing. 

“There was a - if I may say so - rather beautiful young man who greeted me. Romulan? He did something with his hands. I’d never seen it before. Like.....like opening a book.”

I take a couple of steps closer to her before I answer, desperate to close the distance between us but wary to do so. I don’t want to misinterpret the purpose of her visit, the meaning of her nervousness, or the stormy emotions swirling in her eyes. I can feel myself starting to shake and I wonder if she can see it; this second chance made incarnate in human form, right in front of me.

“Elnor, yes. He’s the beautiful one. The gesture means means ‘absolute candour’, a kind of.....rule they live by. You can imagine quite how much fun that is to be around for anyone, such as humans, who’s used to communicating a different way.”

She looks at me with undisguised surprise, and more than a little amusement. I realise why and laugh a little, startling her yet again. “Yes, I do sarcasm now, Kathryn.” I step in closer and carefully lift her hands, hearing her intake of breath. Did I do that? I close her palms together, as if in prayer, and hold them still inside my own, willing the silent moment to go on forever. She is so warm, so tangible and alive, so  _ present _ here with me. Right now. Slowly, petrified to break the spell, I open my hands and watch her do the same inside mine, both of us mirroring what she had seen Elnor do. 

“Absolute candour,” she murmurs and neither of us move. “I’m scared.”

“As am I. Why are you here, Kathryn?” She closes her eyes and, almost imperceptibly, presses the backs of her hands even closer against mine.

“Because I love you. I’ve always loved you.” She steels herself - it’s the same tensing of her shoulder bodies, a mannerism that hasn’t changed in more than twenty years - and opens her eyes. Whatever it is that she sees in mine, she somehow finds what she needs to carry on. I’m glad because I couldn’t speak if I had a phaser to my head. “And I was wrong. So unbelievably wrong - to not tell you, not give you a choice in the matter. To be so very afraid of my own feelings that I lost you entirely and that I then thought it better to leave things as they were. To commit to that decision and live with it. To never even try and contact you again. What an idiot!” 

Without thinking, I’ve already linked her fingers with mine where our hands are still held out in front of us. And without thinking, I already know that I will wake up every morning for the rest of my life and give thanks to whatever invisible forces brought this woman back to me.

“That’s all?” I raise on eyebrow and feel sure my smile’s so big it can be seen from Earth. She laughs the watery, tense sound of someone barely holding back years of tears.

“You really  _ do _ do sarcasm now, don’t you?” 

“A lot has changed since I last saw you.” I take a deep breath and step into the rest of my life: “But I love you now every bit as much as I did as when we last saw each other. No - that’s wrong. I love you more than I did even on that day - I love you for becoming a woman who would travel across space in order to find me, admit her mistakes and declare her love after more than twenty years.”

“What if it’s too long? I waited too long. It was another life, Seven.....what if we’ve both changed even more than we think since then?” I feel the magnitude of her doubts but the warmth of her hands, still in mine, and the knowledge of her love insulates me against every one of them, past, present and future. 

“Kathryn,” I say, reaching out to pull her into my arms, “we will adapt.”


	14. Kathryn - 2400

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It appears that there's a limit even to how long I can torture y'all (and myself) with angst before I feel the need for us to come back to a bit of good, ol'-fashioned smut to keep the spirits up. YOU'RE WELCOME.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm off to wash my brain out with soap 😆😆😆

I’ve been grinning all day every day since I ended the call with Deanna. A part of me constantly wants to call her back and tell her that it’s finally happened - something in what she said, some part of her irrepressible optimism finally reached me. But there’s no time for that. I need to get ready. I think I understand for the first time what it really means to have nothing to lose. What does it matter what she says to me now? If she refuses to see me, if she spits in my face, if she doesn’t even remember or care who I am - nothing could be worse than what I’ve already put myself through. The point is to have tried. 

I try to sleep but it’s hours before I can settle. Insomnia like this hasn’t plagued me since Voyager but my nerves are shot to pieces. It’ll be a while longer before I can realistically set out and the logistics of the journey, the number of favours I’ll have to call in, make my head spin. I hope every night isn’t going to keep being like this - the knot in my stomach which appeared when I made my decision hasn’t shown any sign of shifting. In fact I swear it’s growing hour by hour. At this rate, I’ll be a wreck by the time I do see her again. Like every night now, I doze off fitfully, practicing, perfecting over and over in my head what I could possibly say to her after all this time. 

Next thing I know, I’m on Voyager, and my legs are aching. This corridor always feels too long after a duty shift spent mostly standing, and the familiar fatigue makes me rush a little along the corridor towards my quarters, towards the promise of a bath. 

My door opens and Seven is sitting there, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, on my sofa. In a bathrobe - the kind that stops well above the knee - and it looks so pleasantly smooth against her skin, and so very dubiously ‘tied’ across her front. “ _This is a dream_ ,” a little voice in my head whispers before I lose control of my consciousness and fall, relieved, into a sleep laced with delicious fantasy.

Seven’s hair is down and there’s something about her which is somehow...older, wiser than when she last sat here in my quarters. I think my heart stops when I can bear to make myself look at her properly. I see the shape of her thighs where the silky materials outlines them and she leans back very little - just enough that the robe tightens across her chest. I swallow, make a show of casually taking off my jacket. As though it’s an everyday occurrence to have the love of my life sitting in my living room like some kind of wanton goddess, nipples straining against the material of her gown, leaving me under no illusion whatsoever that she is wearing nothing under it.

I open my mouth, the sound of my own heartbeat roaring in my ears, but she shakes her head. “I think for once Kathryn, we can agree that there are some things we don’t need to talk through. I may still be learning a great deal about humanity but you I can read like a proverbial book.” She pulls her lower lip into her mouth. I have never known Seven so confident, so entirely sure of herself. So consciously sexual. It’s the hottest thing I’ve ever seen. “Come,” she says and reaches out her hand to me. “I am not sitting here merely to be admired. You can touch, as well as look.”

I take her hand, suddenly quite unsteady on my feet, and let her guide me closer. “Kneel,” she says, opening her legs wide enough that there is space for me on the floor between her feet, and I obey. She cups my face in her hands and the kiss is searing, neither of us holding anything back. I find my own hands slipping under the material that covers her thighs and running my hands over the firmness of her upper legs. “Fuck,” she says at the contact, her mouth leaving mine and if I wasn’t looking directly into her eyes, I’d swear she’d been possessed. “Apologies for the profanity but I hadn’t expected it to be so…..” she trails off gasping, before proving she wasn’t really sorry at all for the first profanity by uttering another. My hands have migrated over her abdomen and torso and found her breasts. I’m only running my palms gently over them with a little pressure - I haven’t even gotten started yet - but I can feel her pressing against me, shaking. I raise my hands to her shoulders and she helps me, shrugging the sleeves of her robe easily off those perfect, alabaster shoulders, but not before she’s divested me of my own grey undershirt. 

There’s a moment when we pause and just look at each other and, when her eyes meet mine, I want to cry. Neither of us seem ready to believe that we’re finally here. Took us fucking long enough. “Stand,” she commands and then “take them off.” Her expression is like nothing I’ve ever seen before and I want to remember it for the rest of my life. I’m feeling a little exposed in only my underwear until she shifts and pulls the rest of the robe off her body. She is completely naked. My brain short circuits and this time it’s me being profane. “Yes please,” she says, pulling me back towards her and kissing the word from my lips. Her tongue is still teasing mine as she runs her hand up my back and undoes my bra. It falls to the ground as she moves back, inviting me onto the sofa with her, my legs straddling her thighs.

When we break apart, breathing heavily, she takes my right hand between both of her own and turns it over, looking at it as though it’s something holy, something to be worshiped. “Seven,” I kiss under her ear and down her neck before continuing, “what do you want?” Suddenly I feel the wet heat of her beautiful lips around two of my fingers as she pulls them into her mouth, her tongue lightly running over their hypersensitive skin. I can’t believe the volume or nature of the sound that comes out of my mouth and I feel her smile at having been its sole cause. When she releases my hand, she raises on eyebrow at me as if to say: _do you understand?_ I’ve never received any message louder or more clearly in my entire life.

Her first orgasm comes quickly, hardly a surprise - we’re both desperate for release, driven wild by desire we’ve fought to hold back for too long. She’s soaking when the two fingers she asked for enter her and she keeps her eyes open, her hands tangling into the back of my hair, until the very last moment. I revel in the feeling and sight of the aftershocks telling me how hard she came as her breath hitches and her muscles continue to clench around me. I keep my hand as still as I can but very gently stroke my thumb across her clit every so often to draw out her pleasure. But this is nowhere near as much of that as I want to give her before we're done. As she slips her hand inside my underwear, she captures my lips in hers again and I feel her reangle her own hips, trying to pull me back deeper inside her. “Good girl, I thought you weren’t done yet,” I say, surprised at how hoarse my own voice sounds in my ears. And then there’s no one time to think at all. There’s nothing but the ecstasy of her hand between my legs and mine between hers and I’m made of every feeling I’ve ever had for her. 

I wake up burning, almost feverish with want. I let myself drift in the hangover of pleasure from my dream, find the heat between my legs with my own hand and go through several replays of the glorious fantasy in my head before I’m fully satisfied. 

And then it’s back to the mundane responsibilities of the real world. Preparations and admin duties abound. No one tells you about that when they encourage you to go pursue your soulmate after an unrequited love of nearly three decades.

Before I set off, I spare a minute to put Deanna’s mind at rest. She has, after all, been one of my greatest pillars of strength these last few years. I’m not even ready to think about the debt of gratitude I owe this warm, loving, infinitely patient woman. 

I write and send it quickly, No going back now, and it’s a deliberate move on my part; there is someone to hold me accountable.   
_De, thank you. You’re right. You always were._

I’m already out of the door when I hear two responses from her ping in quick succession.   
_I know._

_I’m so proud of you, Katie._


	15. Raffi - 2401

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Found family of misfit trope in a queer-authored story? Shocker.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I got eaten and spat out by life. UGH. Lost my flow a bit as a result and, I've got to be honest...I don't *love* this chapter but I decided to bite the bullet and post so that I can try and keep going. May come back later though and tear it apart with a rewrite!

I never hoped, even in my wildest dreams, to find a semblance of peace again. To find this family. First, the simple chance to reconnect with Cris - almost an accident in its timing, the kind with consequences you only see much later, when they smack you unceremoniously around the face. Together again with my quicksilver, bridge-burning best friend - who would have known how much we pair of traumatised idiots needed to find some of the trust we’d lost in humanity again? And to find it so perfectly in each other. 

And who would have known that damn JL, for once, wasn’t in the position to be anyone’s saviour - that he was the one needing to be rescued from his own despair, far more than any of the rest of us? Unlike what he might have first suspected, there was never any need for him to break down my walls, crawl back into my heart and apologetically try to reignite the flame of friendship and respect. The damn thing had been there all along, never quite weak enough to be extinguished. Funny how things turn out.

There are days when the exhaustion and grief of losing Gabe still hits me with a physical force, just as there are days when Jurati can’t bear the weight of what she did, and Cris and I take turns holding her as she sobs herself in and out of sleep. There are, unmistakably, moments when I see a shadow of existential dread cross Soji’s face, or when I catch JL looking at Elnor with an acute grief for the normal life he never had.

But there are days - far more days - when we find ourselves in the mess hall in the morning, sharing breakfast like the chaotic, messy family we’ve become. There are hours spent talking about everything and nothing at all - on the bridge, on the holodeck, along the streets of some dusty, market town planetside. There are the unspoken bonds of instinctive protection and anticipation that develop slowly only between those who really care about one another - the quiet understanding the someone needs a hot drink or a shoulder to cry on, a punch on the arm or a day entirely to themselves.

And then there’s Seven. The woman who’s had to put herself back together more times than any of us can imagine. Who has lost a child, and on top of that a soulmate, but never her humanity. Who has become my greatest ally and confidante, my fiercest supporter. It was brief but beautiful, the time I loved her - the mere weeks before our relationship matured into a friendship I never expected to find at this stage of life. I knew even then there was a wound in her heart so deep it could only ever be healed by the person who’d made it. And yet, after everything, she chooses over and over again to trust us all - to be a part of our motliest of crews, and does it all with love, infinite forbearance and no small amount of sass on the way. Who else, apart from a hard-ass ex-Borg Fenris ranger would be making those whole crew breakfasts as though it was the most natural role in the world?

When it happens, I’m the only one around and, drifting through the ship, I hear a sound I could never have imagined just a couple of years ago - Seven and Elnor laughing together over something or other ridiculous she’s trying to teach him to cook from scratch. Waffles?

Then, just like that, there’s a shuttle hailing us, the face of a living legend is looking right at me from the view screen and I can’t keep the stupid grin off my face.  _ You came for her. You finally swallowed your damn inane Starfleet pride and came for her.  _ She looks at me a little unnerved; the vicarious joy I’m feeling for Seven must be emanating from my pores. I want to say “about fucking time.” I want to say “good for you.” I really, really want to say, “if you hurt her again, any member of this crew will tear you limb from limb.” 

Instead I say, “Kathryn Janeway. I think it would be best if you came aboard and talked with her face to face , don’t you?”


	16. Seven - 2387

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which it becomes clear that, in my headcanon, Tuvok was really Voyager's counsellor (cuz, like, if any ship really needed one....)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Every time I mention Icheb, I actually do a little grimace of pain. Although I know it wasn't to everyone's taste, I adored Picard but that was a plot choice I'm not gonna recover from. My poor Seven 💔💔💔

People talk about feeling numb. Bullshit. The exact opposite - there is not a single inch of my body not saturated with my grief and my rage. And still  _ still _ I can’t push her out of my head. Icheb can’t push her out of my head. Like a shuttle on autopilot, intent on self-annihilation, she’s the first person, the only person I can even think of thinking of reaching out to. Perhaps this is the real meaning of love. When your world is ending and you can feel yourself slowly being incinerated from the inside out, whose voice is it you want to hear? Who is it you need to hold you even when there can be no possible comfort to be had?

The part of me that died with Icheb left the rest of me with a gaping hole at its centre. Every fibre of my being cries out for Kathryn - for her love, her strength, the simple comfort of her presence - more than ever. Betrayed by my own pitiful emotions, my weakness, even in the pitch black darkness of his loss. I had thought I truly understood what it meant to be alone when I was severed from the collective but it turns out I had no idea of the magnitude of loneliness a human can feel. 

How could I ever have imagined, when I first met Tuvok, that he would be the one to save me. To pull me back from the brink with nothing but honesty, and a promise. I still do not know how he managed to find me or how he knew that I needed his word not to send Kathryn to me. Or that I needed his words more than his customary silence.

“Icheb was a son to you and you have experienced the worst thing any parent can imagine - the loss of a child. What happened was not only devastating, but sudden and violent in its manner. It is not something you should expect to ever fully recover from and it - the murder of someone you love - is not something to which there is any normal or abnormal response.”

And his words did not make everything alright. In fact, I knew nothing would ever be alright again, but I had needed someone to say that aloud. To name what had happened and acknowledge the horror and brutality of it. To say the words, as I still could not, without flinching.


	17. Kathryn - 2379

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Instead I find myself in Indiana, every bit as bruised as I was on Voyager, every bit as disillusioned with the person I’ve become."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So confession time - when I read other wonderful J/7 stories, I always do a fair amount of squealing at the adorable Janeways, should they make an appearance, and the whole glorious family dynamic. But this is me gang, so I'm afraid my attempts at painting a nice visual of the farm were a bit overshadowed by KJ's angst and rage. Still, I couldn't leave her alone with that, even in my imagination, hence how we find ourselves with Phoebe 🙃 So, let me know what you think of this chapter!

The thought of finally reaching home was the only thing that had forced me out of bed every morning. After I ended my friendship with Seven, even that was almost not enough of a reason to keep going but I had thought, prayed, that it would somehow mend me.

Instead I find myself in Indiana, every bit as bruised as I was on Voyager, every bit as disillusioned with the person I’ve become. When I was growing up, this house smelt of new jams and chutneys and its kitchen is still always bursting with jars, fruit, seeds, and nuts brimming over out of a torn brown paper bags onto the tables, the chairs, the floor. The room itself would be beautiful if any of its surfaces could actually be seen. All is wood, panels stained a dark cherry colour and worn smooth by years of persistent use and relentless, Traditionalist domesticity. Growing up, fingers constantly attempting to pilfer from pans of half-set jam and jars of homemade pickles the size of my own head, I often wondered how my mother had time to do everything she set her mind to in her professional and family life, and still maintain the constant chaos of this kitchen and the sprawling, equally disordered space outside.

I am soaked to the skin with rain when I arrive, nothing but the clothes I left San Francisco in to protect me against a relentless summer storm. The garden is as alive with the smell of herbs and spices as I remember and just like the kitchen, appears to be a kind of exhibition of shapes, colours and disorder. I remember, as a child, running as fast as I could along these paths, stems and leaves brushing my arms and chest and leaving me smelling like a giant, confused bouquet and stained all over with pollen. I wonder vaguely whether, in old but familiar places, empty wine bottles from happy and unhappy nights spent on the patio can still be found where I left them so many years ago. This evening as I tear down the path towards the glow of old-fashioned electric light in the gloom surrounding the farm, the flora only reaches to my calves and knees and it’s nothing but an irritation - something in my way, impeding my progress.

I bang the door so hard that my hand will be bruised the next day, and stand sobbing out incoherent sentences as my mother opens the door. “It’s…all…your fault……you two. You made me……you made me like this…didn’t you? You two and Daddy….family and...duty and honour and Starfleet and…...and…...love……..command school…...I can’t have it all….lies…….and I hurt her more than I thought I could…...ever…..hurt anyone. I’m a monster….” Phoebe is beside the door now too and catches me as I throw myself into her arms. I briefly think about fighting against her arms closing around me, but a full night and day of crying has left me drained. I feel her jumper scratch against my cheek, smell what I recognise to be the beginnings of one of her huge oil paintings drying out in another room. I’m too exhausted to be surprised when my sister scoops my exhausted body up in her arms, and carries me up the stairs.

I wake up nearly a full day later to chicken soup with hot, buttery toast which keeps coming as I realise how starving I am. And Phoebe, without questions or agenda, content to sit next to me in bed with an arm slung over my shoulders, so uncharacteristically silent that I realise I must have scared the hell out of her. 


	18. Seven - 2401

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Seven,” she breathes, “I lied. I can’t wait even a second longer.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh I ENJOYED writing this for these two 💜  
> Comments and kudos as appreciated as always. I have the idea for most of the rest of this story (the ending is gonna be PRETTY sugary so you've been warned!) but don't know how long it may take me to get there!

I brush a strand of hair off her face and my hand stays there, toying with a single, grey lock. She is as beautiful as the day I met her, every bit as tempting. I hold her face in my hands and her eyes are bright, shining with unshed tears. She blinks and they tumble down her face, lines of salt I lean down and taste on my lips. Her skin is warm and soft under my mouth and I can’t stop myself now that I’ve started. I can’t bear to think - the weight of this, the sheer euphoria of it will subsume me if I do. So I kiss her tears away, slowly, wanting to memorise the taste and texture of her delicate cheeks, the unguarded sigh she makes as I move down towards her neck. “Seven,” she breathes, “I lied. I can’t wait even a second longer.” 

Her lips, when they first touch mine, are angled sublimely, her bottom lip brushing against my top one. Her hands find their way into my hair, meeting at the back of my head. Her grip is as possessive as her burning, beautiful mouth on mine and I see perfection. 

The kiss is endless and filled with everything that we don’t yet know how to say in words - pain and passion, years of longing and regret, her thousands of apologies and my infinite forgiveness, freely given. Under all of it, with every touch of her tongue against mine and each brush of her fingertips on the back of my neck and up into my hair, there is the reflection of my own boundless love, a feeling that makes my heart ready to burst out of my chest. I can sense Kathryn’s desire intertwining with my own, feel her holding herself back every bit as much as I am. At least, that is, until she grazes her teeth over my upper lip and bites down gently. The butterflies in my stomach, the ones which have been there since I first saw Kathryn, start to go wild and I pull her even closer to me, hear us both gasp at the additional, almost unbearable contact. The sound sends a jolt through my whole body. I pull back and see that her pupils are huge, her cheeks glowing and every bit as flushed as my own. “Gods, I love you,” she says, and holds my face against hers, our foreheads just touching. 

“I know,” I whisper, “but never stop telling me.” Her smile is as bright as a star going supernova. “Kathryn,” my voice wavers but my resolve doesn’t, “will you….would you like to …..I mean, there’s not much privacy here…” 

I want to kick myself and start all over again, ideally this time getting my words out, despite the seemingly hypnotic power Kathryn has to make me trip over my own tongue. But she reaches out her hand to mine, links our fingers together when I take it, and says in the voice which has haunted my dreams for decades, “Yes, please. Take me to your quarters, Seven.” 


	19. Naomi - 2400

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Naomi Wildman,” she says, the familiar opening. “I’ve missed you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Baby chapter because I have no brain at all these days 😣 and I'm really struggling with the next one.

When I see her, I always find myself reverting back to that child I was on Voyager, old habits emerging and forgotten mannerisms reappearing out of nowhere. This time I don’t even need to rein in the usual excitement which surfaces - she’s every bit as bouncy as I am and she looks the best I’ve seen her for so long. Too, too long. 

“Naomi Wildman,” she says, the familiar opening. “I’ve missed you.” I love the woman Seven has grown into every bit as much as I loved the younger version of her I grew up with. She’s the closest thing to a sister I’ve ever had and my heart has broken far too many times watching hers break these last few years. But I’ve missed her too, sometimes so much I can’t even bear it. Even without any conscious understanding, it pained me to watch the gap between Seven and Captain Janeway widen, to feel its effects start to consume our once happy family; their concerted effort to avoid seeing one another, even at formal Starfleet functions, the strain that put on all of us who cared about both of them, until Seven disappeared off the radar entirely. And my promises…..the exhaustion of keeping them and carrying her secrets all this time - never revealing where she is, what she’s doing, even to my mother.

“Have you heard from her? Recently, I mean.” I try to control the shock and disbelief which much be clear on my face. Seven looks more sheepish and somehow younger than I’ve ever seen her before. I think of all the times Captain Janeway has contacted me over the years, all the ways she has wanted and tried to ask after Seven - her wellbeing, her location - overt and covert enquiries. I think of all of occasions I’ve had to lie, to obfuscate, to misdirect. And after all of it, I have to shake my head now. For once, I haven’t heard from Kathryn Janeway in months, almost a year.

“I’ll come and see you soon,” she says. And then she adds quietly, as though it is an afterthought, though clearly nothing could be further from the truth: “If you do hear from her, if she…..if she asks you, you can tell her.”

“What?”

“You can tell her all of it. Where I am, what I’m doing….that I’ve asked you again and again about her all these years……..you can tell her all of it. It is time, Naomi Wildman.”

There is too much to say, too many words fighting to get out of me, so instead I say nothing. But I smile, and I can feel that she has finally found some measure of peace. 

“You’ll come and see both of us, Sev? Mom too?” She nods, and, wonderfully, smiles back at me.

“I look forward to it, Naomi Wildman.”


	20. Elnor - 2401

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Qowat Milat are not well-known for their “grinning”, Raffi.”   
> cf. "Borg do not sit"/"Klingons do not allow themselves to be probed" et al 😂

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you like this one, in which Elnor is (AS ALWAYS) adorable, and must be protected at all costs. Space elf is bae 🤗 Oh, and I've been back on a writing roll *whoop*   
> Let me know what you think - Elnor is not an easy one for me to write although the kid deserves a spinoff all of his own, if you ask me!

Raffi tells me not to stare after them, but I cannot help it. They are holding hands and when Seven incidentally glances up, she catches my eye briefly, and I think understand what is happening. I love Seven, and I have never seen her face like this before, not for the two years I have known her. So purely happy, so entirely open and vulnerable. 

“Come on kid,” Raffi puts her arm around my shoulders and pulls me away from where I stand, watching the two women walk in silence, hand in hand, towards Seven’s quarters. 

“Who is she, Raffi? The other woman with Seven?” 

“Kathryn Janeway,” Raffi says, and then, “Why are you smiling?” She laughs a little, something I no longer take offense at among the crew of this ship. I know they do not laugh  _ at  _ me - we are a family now.

“The same reason you are, Elnor.” She snorts again. “Do you even realise how much you’re grinning?” 

“I think you are.....pulling my leg,” I try out the expression I have heard the others using, and I like how it feels in my mouth. Idioms are not exactly untruths but still, they take some getting used to. Absolute candour does not always allow for the challenges of figurative speech patterns humans use. “Qowat Milat are not well-known for their “grinning”, Raffi.” Still, I can feel my cheeks aching with my smile of vicarious joy for Seven.

“We all want to see the people we care about truly happy, don’t we?” I nod. “That woman is a very old friend of Seven. Seven loves her with all her heart and soul, and.....well, I can’t believe for a moment, from what I’ve heard, that the feeling isn’t mutual. And now they’ve finally found each other again.” She pauses before continuing slowly. “Although they’ve had their.....difficult moments....."

“Like you and Picard.” She looks at me with that impressed but slightly suspicious face she employs when she remembers that, despite my youth and openness, the way I see the world doesn’t mean I am naïve to what is happening right in front of me. Though I enjoy the fact this still surprises Raffi, and the others, every single time. 

“You could say that,” she sighs quietly. “Not in the same way of course but - yes. It’s possible to care about someone very much, and to have them in your life more than once, in a very important way. But for things in the relationship to.....go absolutely to hell in a handbasket between those times. It’s....”

“Hell,” I interrupt, my tone questioning. She is laughing already and I steer us towards the mess hall and its replicators, sensing a long and intriguing new lesson in human metaphor approaching. “In a hand...basket?” Raffi sits me down and tries to get a measure of control over her face, failing when I piece the whole thing together to ask again, “What is this - going to hell in a handbasket?” 


	21. Kathryn - 2401

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just read it already 😋

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello lovely gang of readers......welcome to two chapters of classic J/7 love and smut. Because you all deserve to be spoilt, especially those who are so generous with their comments and support. Enjoy 🖤💜💗

The door closes behind us, I loose my grip on her hand and we’re both suddenly shy. Every single one of my senses is suddenly on red alert, heightened to an almost uncomfortable degree. I can feel the fibres of my clothes brushing against my skin, can hear my own blood coursing through my ears. And I can smell all the layers of scent imaginable in the room. They’re familiar, some of them - the faint, pleasant and comforting odours of a starship air circulation system, the lingering richness of real brewed coffee from earlier in the day. That I’d know anywhere. And there are others - newer - something clean and pleasant I can’t recognise, soap perhaps. And over it all, Seven - the scent of the woman I love, the smell that used to make my stomach flip somersaults on Voyager, that used to linger in my quarters, tantalisingly, long after she herself had gone. I would happily wake up surrounded by it every day, for the rest of my life. 

I have no idea where to look without blushing, my earlier bravado evaporated now I find myself alone with Seven. She takes off her jacket slowly and lays it down on a chair. I don’t know if it’s an invitation or a promise, but when she finally meets my eyes, her gaze is every bit as bashful as I think my own must be. And we’re both still just standing, barely inside the door, like two idiots suspended in time, incapable of moving forward even an inch. 

“I didn’t think it was possible,” my mouth is moving without my brain having any control over it. I don’t care. “But you’re even more beautiful than when I last saw you, Seven.” She turns to face me fully, and she’s so close I can feel her breath on my face even before she leans in to gently brush her lips against mine again. There’s a hitching in my lungs that spreads into warm, nervous anticipation and arousal throughout my whole body. I put my hands tentatively on her waist where her sweater clings a little to the line of her curves. She looks - somehow - so confident and so  _ entirely  _ Seven in what she wears now, and in how she carries herself. I don’t know how I can feel it - after all, I haven’t even seen her for over two decades - but I can. Deep down somewhere in my core, as lowers her hands to the outside of my thighs, I sense how she has grown into herself, even with the earlier swagger now gone. We are both, perhaps, the sum of everything we were on Voyager all those years ago, and what we’ve had to work hard to make of ourselves since. 

“My Kathryn,” she says. Her hands are hot through the fabric of my pants and the light squeeze she gives my legs, along with the soft tone of her voice, make me almost dizzy with want. “Still such an overthinker. What’ve you got that incredible mind of yours stuck on?” I sigh, but only with the relief of how well she can still see into my soul, after all this time.

“How much ground we have to make up. How many damn years we’ve wasted,” I feel the threat of tears start to prick at my eyes and take a deep breath. “How, now that I’m here with you - where I’ve dreamed about being for nearly as long as I can remember - I don’t know what to do.” The sense of loss - physical and emotional - is palpable inside me when she removes her hands from my outside of my thighs and lifts my own away from each side of her body. But it’s only for a second. I swallow, loudly, as I realise she’s taking her sweater off. She pauses and I reach out instinctively, wanting to run my fingers over the smooth, incredibly sexy muscles of her arms. My mouth is as dry as a bone. 

“Wait,” she whispers, and takes hold of the hem of her own vest, fingers trembling slightly. She quirks an eyebrow at me, the mannerism so familiar it tugs at my heart. She doesn’t move an inch, and I realise it’s almost a request for permission. I nod. She lifts it over her head and, in one fluid movement, takes my hands in hers and replaces them on her now bare waist, moaning when our skin makes contact. Nudging her back against the wall, I watch my own fingers raising gooseflesh where they move up her sides and across her stomach. She closes her eyes, leans her head back, and every sigh my touch elicits is like a small symbol of redemption, resonating inside me. 

“I don’t think a single day was wasted,” her voice shakes, “since they all combined to bring us here. Now.” She kisses me, her hands sliding round my back and lower down until they’re resting on my ass, pulling me against her with a ferocity that makes my hips move with a mind of their own. My body reacts without any conscious thought, angling my thigh between hers and pulling her own between mine. In the past, with other people, I would have been embarrassed to ever make a noise as loud as the one I do when I feel her shift against me, desperate for contact. Half leaning against the wall behind her, she arches her back and, every bit as vocal as I’ve just been, presses the hard muscles of her upper leg into my very centre. 

“I think you know exactly what to do, Kathryn. Or at least, I think you know exactly what you want to do. Don’t you?” Her voice is thick with lust and I have to summon considerable courage and all my practiced, professional calm to attempt an answer. 

“Of course, I do,” I whimper it, every word an effort as I pull back, trying to find enough seconds of clarity to move us somewhere better than this before things get any wilder. “I want to make love to you for the rest of the day.” She looks me straight in the eyes and bites her bottom lip, hard. “And then all night long.” Her arm disappears behind her own back and she undoes the clasp of her bra, shrugging it off her shoulders as I try to continue to speak. “And then tomorrow as well....” We are momentarily frozen again, inches from one another, until I take her hands and put them at the very bottom of my black top. “Undress me, please. And then take me to a surface other than this wall,” I feel my nervousness ebbing away a little, and even manage a smile. “If you would be so kind.” Seven makes quick work of my top, and my bra but then stops, just short of touching my naked skin, which is crying out for her hands all over it.

“What about after tomorrow?” she asks, suddenly as young and vulnerable as the day I met her. 

“I’ve been in love with you nearly 30 years. I fully intend to spend at least the next 30 as well as the 30 after that making up for lost time.” I stay still, barely able to move or breathe as she finishes undressing me, and then herself. We stand in front of each other in nothing but panties, holding one another’s gaze as though we’re both too scared to dare look anywhere else yet. Which I, for one, definitely am. “That is, if you’ll let me?”

“Yes,” she says. “ _Oh_ _yes_.”


	22. Seven - 2401

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The summary of this chapter should be sung to the tune of "Baby shark" and goes something like:  
> We love smut, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo  
> We love smut, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo  
> We love smut, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo  
> We love smut

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As last chapter - thanks for reading, thanks especially *so much* for kudos and commenting. Writing things that go on this site is, at times, a very good bit of self care for me (as, tbh, is engaging with all things Trek in general) and I'm always so in awe of how kind and supportive this community really is. So thanks and love to all who make it that way 💫

This time it is Kathryn who reaches out her hand and pulls me towards her, and pulls both of us toward my bed. She always was the braver one of us, whatever people thought. She stops, just shy of the mattress and pulls me to her, one hand on the back of my neck, gently but firmly gripping my hair and the other, as she kisses me, making its way upwards over my abdomen and torso. When she cups one of my breasts, I pull away from the kiss, moaning against her cheek, overwhelmed by the contact. 

“I’ve imagined this so, so many times. You wouldn’t believe.” Her voice trails off as she plants kisses in a line down my neck and onto my collarbone and shoulder. I shudder with pleasure. I’m sure she could stand and look at me with those hungry eyes and bring me to orgasm just with that low, glorious voice of hers. I keep the thought to myself - absolute candour is one thing, but I think it’s a little soon to say something like that aloud. 

Instead I hear myself say: “When?” Her thumb grazes against my already hardened nipple and I wonder if it’s possible to die from being too aroused. I seem to be participating in research to prove that it is. “When have you imagined it?” She pushes me down onto the bed and, almost immediately, covers my body with her own, her thigh easily slipping between my two again, positioned to elicit maximum pleasure but the relief lasts only for a second. She sits back up on her knees, her legs straddling one of mine and the view - Gods - the view is glorious. 

“I’ve imagined it every day since I last saw you, sometimes several times a day.” Her cheeks are almost imperceptibly pinker than a moment ago but the colour deepens even further as she continues. “I imagine us together like this when I’m trying to fall asleep, I dream about it when I am. I’ve pictured us too many times to count.....sitting through the direst Starfleet meetings, letting my mind drift during all those dull afternoons Admirals have to endure. And....” Her face is glowing.

“And, Kathryn?” 

She raises her eyes to mine, her hands roaming over my chest, finding their hypersensitive targets and pinching, lightly. Just enough to make my head spin and my mouth utter a series of profanities I can’t hold back. She’s smirking when she answers finally. “And whenever I’ve wanted release - if I’ve been....well rarely, but with someone in bed. When I’ve been alone. It’s always you I think about. It’s always you I imagine touching me, when I’m touching myself.”

My mouth is so dry I don’t know how I manage to push even two words out of it. But I do. “Show me,” I manage to say and I see the slightly coy look in her eye even as I also simultaneously witness the signs of her arousal increase exponentially. 

“On or off?” she asks, her thumb slipping under the very top of her panties. Her voice is suddenly filled with the casual, performative confidence of the Starfleet captain I remember. Apparently she is as keen to be watched as I am to have the chance to watch her. 

“Off,” I whisper.

“Remove them, then,” she orders. “Or do I have to do everything myself?” Her look is one I remember well from our closest velocity games and intellectual battles. Openly arrogant, and flirtatious. The heat and throb where her thigh was pressed against me just moments ago is now all but unbearable, but I sit up a little and do exactly as I’ve been told. I slide her panties down slowly, understanding that we’ve entered a game where every move each of us makes is now designed to torture the other as much as possible. And I have only myself to blame. 

She makes a far bigger show than necessary - lifting each knee off the bed and kicking her underwear across the room. I wonder if I should warn her that she may have to tie me up to keep my hands off her, once she starts touching herself. I’m about to speak when I see the quiet, pleading desperation in her eyes too. I feel my face break into a grin, knowing now that she’s just as likely to be the one begging for me to touch her. 

It’s only a second before I learn a profound lesson - no amount of erotic fantasies, vivid daydreams or half-conscious, lustful thoughts can prepare you for the actual sight of the woman you love kneeling over you, lowering her own hand between her legs and slipping her fingers into the wetness there. It takes barely any time at all - hardly any strokes at all of her beautiful hand over her clit, until she’s starting to close her eyes and edge towards losing herself. I’m not surprised - my own thighs are clamped together as tightly as I can in a vain attempt to take the edge off my own almost painful arousal. I don’t know if I can stand to look without touching much longer.

“I want to taste you,” I say, before I can stop myself. Her eyes, now dark pools of desire, snap open. She lifts her fingers to my lips like a blessing, and I take them in my mouth. Somehow, without speaking, we both move, the same idea taking over our bodies before we can even voice it. My thigh moves up between hers and one of her legs presses between mine. She lowers herself closer over me and I feel her very core - the hot, wet desire of it - rubbing against my naked skin. We both come, shuddering and crying out, so quickly, and almost at exactly the same time. It must have been barely a minute, but twenty-five years is a lot of foreplay and, as we cling to each other like a pair of drowning women, I feel my own desire and Kathryn’s still buzzing tangibly, only just below the surface.

When she sits back up on her heels, and shakes her hair off her face, the most wanton sight I’ve ever seen, I can feel the reaction of my own muscles, still clenching deliciously after orgasm at the view of her like this; chest flushed and breath heavy, eyes just opening again to meet my own.

“Carry on,” I say, and she grins wickedly. 

The guttural noise she makes when she slips two of her fingers inside herself almost tips me over the edge again. The groan I let out in response must finally be what makes her take pity on me. Without ever changing the rhythm of the hand she’s using to pleasure herself, she moves the other to rest on my inner thigh, lightly playing with the edge of my underwear. So close to where I need her the most urgently. “Happy to take them off?” she asks, her voice half breath and I answer by doing so, arching my hips off the bed but never looking away from the beautiful, intimate spectacle in front of me. 

When I feel her fingers love between my legs for the first time, I know I’m already dripping with want again. I will remember the deeply provocative noise she makes in reaction to my wetness forever. Her thighs are starting to tremble already but, before I lose the ability to process my own thoughts entirely, I sense she is slowing down, trying to draw out how long she can last to focus on me. It isn’t going to take long - I can’t believe I haven’t already come apart entirely under her hand as it draws circles lightly over my clit. When I feel her two fingers slide inside me, the ecstasy of this - and how long I’ve wanted it - sets every part of me alight with an intensity I could never have imagined. I’m already right on the edge when Kathryn starts to come, hard, pulling me with her into the most extraordinarily emotional orgasm I’ve ever had.

She collapses on top of me, both of us quivering. I’m babbling her name and she mine and we are kissing and I don’t know whose the tears are, or maybe they belong to both of us. But everything in the universe is truly and absolutely right, for the first time. And this, I realise, is only the very beginning of our happiness.


	23. Seven - 2376

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Let's get back on Voyager a long time ago for a wee minute, shall we 😉

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Think I might amend the chapter titles to add in the order in which these chapters actually happen because I'm not sure how easy it is to follow this if you're not the one writing it hahaha

I do not actually understand her often. But I do not think this is necessary. I know that I love her. Adore her, even - I believe this is the word humans would use, although no one who has been in love would accept such gradations. Love, when you feel it, is an all-consuming force - like a wildfire, or a tsunami. It does not have shades of nuance or grades. Love, adoration, this particular kind of burning desire - it just _is_. My love for Captain Janeway is now as much a part of me as anything else. It is the constant and steady point around which the rest of my life orbits.

I love Kathryn when we play velocity and she yelps in frustration for missing a single point, or making a forced error. I love the concentration on her face before we play a point and the focus she shows - similar but so different - when she is on the bridge, making decisions which would terrify some of the bravest people in this or any galaxy. I love seeing her mind work - watching her weigh up options, put forward arguments, extend her intellect to the limits of its considerable range and, time and time again, find a solution. Or a way out, a manmade, Janeway-made miracle of some kind. 

I love seeing her body work - how she stands so upright and strong when she is on duty, her presence as a Starfleet captain far bigger than her actual physical size. I could pick her up with one arm and yet, when in command, she behaves as though she were seven feet tall, invulnerable. I love when she wears her Starfleet uniform - pristine, and pressed to perfection every day. And I love when she doesn’t wear it - those evening when she stretches my brain and my patience with our discussions, clad in that grey undershirt which clings to her form and only highlights the parts of her body I want to run my hands over. Which, if I am honest, is all of them.

And I love her physicality - how she touches me on the arm, or the shoulder, when we talk. Her innately tactile nature. How she holds out a hand to pull me up when we have been playing velocity and she smells, intoxicatingly, of perspiration and her own unique pheromones. How, whenever she takes her hand away, there is a deep disappointment, a profound sense of loss. I love how she walks our ship’s corridors - so sure of herself, so poised and calm. And how she sits and relaxes her muscles so simply, so naturally. It is something I still cannot grasp myself - how to do that. Perhaps I never will. 

I love the moments we share, alone and with others. But alone most of all. In the astrometrics laboratory, pretending to work whilst I steal glances at her beautiful face, her soft, enticing hair. Try not to get distracted by the way her resolution Starfleet pants cling to her lower half. I love the moments in her quarters and everything we share there - the thoughts spoken aloud to no one else, the companionable quiet of two people entirely at ease with one another, the silent but palpable crackle of something else between us. I love how she is so much more herself in this private space - how she is not the captain or the person on whose narrow shoulders everything must rest. She is just Kathryn Janeway - the most exceptional human being I will ever encounter. The one I love. 

I do not know if it is pleasurable or painful that I want so badly for her to love me back. That, sometimes - just sometimes - I believe she does. But I need to hear her say it. And I wait for the day when I will be able to tell her all of this. I know it surely must come.


	24. Kathryn - 2401

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end is nigh and the smut is high, beloved readers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have nothing but deliciousness and a final burst of fluff to offer you as we reach the end of this one. Let me know what you think as always :p

I always expect the windows of starships to be freezing cold against my skin; always somehow still find myself surprised when they aren’t. Space  _ is _ cold – cold, dark and entirely indifferent. It makes me uneasy that these are now the words I connect with it most often, makes me ashamed of what my younger self would think. But I leave my palm, pressed flush against the pane, and I take comfort in the juxtaposition. Warm flesh and cool stars. Familiarity, and the unknown.

I hear her pad across the floor before I feel her arms embrace me from behind. Even the sound of her approaching fills me with a warm infusion of joy, the anticipation of it almost too much. Feeling her hard nipples brush against the bare skin of my back sends a tingle shooting up my spine. And it catapults me back, with a vivid shock of memory, to a couple of hours ago – to her talented tongue bringing me to orgasm after orgasm, knowing just how long she can keep me going until I physically can’t take any more, even though I want to. My voice is hoarse, my throat parched despite the water I got up to drink. My body, so I thought, finally sated.

I’ve lost track of how long we’ve been here - of how many times we’ve made love, how many ways we’ve found to make each other shake and cry out. The word insatiable has been used, apparently correctly. Her arms around me, as I take my hand away from the window, are gentle and almost,  _ almost _ platonic. But I can feel the rhythm of her heart, pounding against my back, and the way my own echoes it, perfectly. I can feel the twinge of reignition her skin provokes as it touches mine.

“Come back to bed,” she says, and spins me around to capture my lips in a kiss full of intention.

“Gods, Seven, you’re relentless,” I laugh as she pulls me away from the window, her determination sending a wave of fire through me. “I don’t know if either of us can manage another round.” She pushes me back, gently, onto the bed and I moan at the pleasurable ache I can already feel in my leg muscles from so much prior exertion.

“I think we both know that is not true,” says the inconceivably beautiful woman now lowering herself over me. “And anyway, we had a good nap back there to regain some energy. Remember?” She starts to nuzzle my neck and chest with heart-breaking affection. “You were all warm and drowsy and….perfect. And you fell right asleep, curled up against me.” The tenderness of the moment - of the memory of slowly opening my eyes like that - is still fresh and soft in my mind, as comforting as a blanket to a child.

I grit my teeth with pleasure as she bites down on the sensitive skin of my neck. “Yes, Seven, and then we woke up,” I pull her head back to look her in the eyes, “and fucked each other senseless.” As I see the storm in her eyes and feel her hips shift, I pray that she never gets used to hearing me be so profane – that the blunt shock of it never ceases to have such a wonderous effect on her. Her arms are taut and shaking on either side of my head where she supports her body. I know what she wants to do but she holds herself over me and sits a little back on her heels, resisting the urge to press her heat against my own, making me ready to beg. “Please, Seven. Please – I want you so badly.” She smiles wickedly at the shameless, pleading tone of my voice and I rock my hips up, desperate to find the perfect angle as she leans against me just right, and rubs her most intimate, aching wetness over my own. We both gasp at this most sensual of contact, even as we begin to move in synch, my hips arching upwards again and hers holding my body where it needs to be, pinned in place. Seven leans down, covering my lips with her, her kisses relentless and the rhythm of her clitoris catching my own as she rocks against me destroys the last ounce of my self control. I run my hands down her back and settle them on her ass, pulling her against me closer, harder and faster. 

We’re both covered in sweat by the time we come against each other, gasping and crying out in release. It’s a while until I come back to myself fully - my brain feels pleasantly cloudy, full of my love for Seven, full of her smell and the feel of her skin against me as she rolls us over lazily and pulls me closer. She kisses my hair and I nuzzle my face against her neck, my whole body languid and sated. We fall asleep too tired, and too stupid with love to speak. 


	25. Seven - 2401

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cute morning snuffling Janeway in my fic? It's INFINITELY more likely than you think.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So as I was watching Picard all the way through for the *third* time and getting to the #I'mnotcryingyourecrying of it all, I remembered this conversation Seven and Rios have, and how I wanted her to mention Janeway SO badly when he says the line I've included in here. I like a nice fix to canon as much as the next woman :p

Every moment with her is a gift, an unbelievable blessing. I don’t know what I did to deserve this second chance but I thank whatever Gods may be that I have it - that I get to have Kathryn in my arms when I wake up. She’s sleeping like a baby still, murmuring slightly against my chest in a way that makes my heart ache with every small snuffle. Yesterday, I saw this woman stretched out in front of me, naked and moaning with my fingers buried deep inside her. I saw her glorious form straddling mine, her legs quaking, her head thrown back and her voice breaking as she screamed my name. I tasted every part of her, felt her most intimate muscles clench around my tongue as she started to come. Yet still, this morning version - this utterly content, tiny, vulnerable Kathryn curling herself around my body - is perhaps my very favourite vision of all. 

I know she’s awake before she opens her eyes. I feel her move closer against me, feel her hand creeping up to cup my breast, feel her smile against my chest. “I love you,” a small, sleepy voice says and then, “good morning.” I tilt my head down and kiss the bridge of her perfect nose, the corners of her eyes, the soft skin of her jawline. She sighs contentedly. 

Yesterday was the happiest day of my life. Making love with Kathryn was even more breath-taking in reality than I could ever possibly have dreamed. Every one of the many, many times. When our bodies demanded a break we talked, and kissed, and held each other close. We started so many conversations, each one like a book opening - a book with a lot left to cover, one we can read together.

I told her about the evening I sat with Rios - the evening we thought Picard had died - and what he said to me. I told her how it struck home with the force of a physical blow. How I understood so acutely that, even after all this time, he wasn’t the only one haunted by - what was it?- “a  self-righteous, hard-assed old starship captain.” I told her that it was one in a long line of moments when I felt and hoped, against all possible hope, that our destinies might again intertwine. I told her that this was the final spur that pushed me to make sure Picard told all his former Starfleet contacts where I was.  _ Just in case. _

She told me about the night she returned to her family farm. About the roar in the sky and the rain, mixed with tears, dripping off her eyelashes and rolling down her face. She told me about the comfort, even in the midst of misery, of being in a familiar bed and of being in her sister’s arms. Of the incomparable grief when she lost her mother. I told her about Icheb, the words flowing out of me in a way they never had before. And she met me where I needed her to, as always, and with infinite empathy, love and understanding. 

Hours passed and we were still making love, and talking, and making love again. Our conversation evolved, like a living, breathing thing and there were moments when I could believe we are back on Voyager, the enjoyment of hearing our opinions and ideas bouncing off each other, the familiar heat of flirtation making me blush as though nothing had changed. 

But, of course, everything has changed. It’s no longer a fantasy that I can reach out and run my fingers down Kathryn’s porcelain cheeks, that I can press my lips to hers and feel her tongue seek mine. That I can call her mine, and say that I am hers. Forever.

“Good morning to you too,” I say smiling as Kathryn groans, stretching out her back and shoulders. 

“I think you’ve broken me, you divine, captivating, ravenous woman.” She laughs, even as she says it, both of us aware it’s her own palm that is ‘ravenously’ brushing against my hardening nipple. “I’m far too old for that much excit.....” The feigned protest dies in her throat as I slip my hand between her legs and breathe in sharply at the waiting, eager wetness I find there.

“No more excitement for you then, today.” She breathes my name, low and guttural, as I slide my fingers inside her tight, welcoming heat. “We’ll make sure everything is as unhurried, gentle and unexciting as possible.” Which is not, in the end, quite how things go. 


	26. Seven - 2406

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If this story wasn't explicit already, this is where it would earn that tag, more than once. 'Nuff said 😋😋😋

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thing the first - I am full-on obsessed with the quotation Katie leaves Seven (and which I know has its own wee cameo in Voyager.) Just *beautiful*
> 
> Thing the second - I hope y'all enjoy this filth and smut so much, my dear and beloved readers. I just...these two. What can I say? They get in my head with their confounded hotness and chemistry.
> 
> Thing the last - To my newest and loveliest and loveliest friend (the first one I've ever made on here) and greatest fic-writing cheerleader, this is *as promised* and as compensation for my BABY SHARK🦈do 🦈do🦈do🦈do🦈do🦈do. Please accept my humble gift to you of JANEWAY IN GLASSES.

Nothing could have prepared me for this love - not even the knowledge, the collected experience, of thousands of species and countless worlds. For it’s depths, its magnitude, its unexpected perfection. 

And I know that few people ever get to experience such a thing. Maybe this is simply what it is like to be truly loved by Kathryn Janeway, the only person to herself put this feeling into words, albeit someone else’s. She doesn’t even say it to me herself - I wake up one day and feel a profound absence before the memory surfaces - she has an odd, early meeting at Starfleet Headquarters. It is the first morning I have woken up alone since that first day on La Sirena. I do not like it. 

But when I open my eyes, there is a note on Kathryn’s side of the bed. I read its elegant cursive lines whilst nuzzling against her pillow lazily, breathing in her scent:

_ “In that book which is my memory  _

_ On the first page that is the chapter when I first met you, _

_ Appear the words - here begins a new life” _

_ Resonate with you at all? It does with me. I love you, Seven. _

It takes me several minutes to recover from the wave of emotions these simple words, scrawled in Kathryn’s unique hand evoke inside me.

Downstairs, I make myself a coffee and let my thoughts wonder. I wonder, not for the first time, what I would write on the first page of my own book - a book about humanity. It is something Tuvok, the Doctor and I have joked about over the years, a kind of manual, an instruction guide: How To Human. 

_ Love is the most transformative force in the universe.  _ Perhaps this is what I would write. It may not diminish the amount of grief we inevitably have to live through as human beings, nor does it temper the worst of those storms. But my love for Kathryn and the gift of hers for me are what anchor me in this sometimes dark, uncertain universe. What we have found in each other is the light illuminates everything else.

“Hello,” my favourite voice in the whole world says, from behind me. Five years, and my heart still skips a beat every time she walks in the room. I hear her footsteps approach my chair, sense the air move minutely behind me, feel her hand in my hair, lifting it up off the back of my neck and kissing the sensitive skin there. She knows my body better than I know it myself. And so she knows exactly what she is doing to me with each and every touch in each and every place. She kisses me again there, and this time I feel her teeth. I moan as surely as if she had just flicked a switch that controls my body’s state of arousal. This is more than an invitation, more than a query. This is open provocation.

“Do you want something, Kathryn?” My tone barely hides the desire I feel for her already. 

“You know I do. I nearly woke you up before I left.”

“It would have been four am when you left.”

“Yes, well, exactly. Count yourself lucky.”

“Oh, I do. Every single day.” I push my chair back slowly, savouring every moment of this game between us, the tension of having to wait even a few seconds longer for what we both clearly want, badly. When I turn myself around and face her, the smile that greets me is every bit as suggestive as her tone has been.

“Gods, Kathryn,” I exclaim, getting nothing but a look of mock innocence in response. “Do you even need those glasses. I mean, really?” She kisses me as she straddles my lap and I marvel, for what must be the millionth time, that every kiss is still as exciting as the very first one was. “You wear them just to torture me, don’t you? I’m absolutely sure of it. You know they….do something to me.” 

“Oh, I know exactly what they do to you.” She’s practically pulled me off the chair, starting to drag me behind her towards the hall and then, I imagine, upstairs to the bedroom. But she stops and it’s so sudden, I keep walking, and collide right into her. “But I love you all hot and bothered, she says, taking advantage of our proximity to remove my top and slip her hands under the waistband of my pants. My breathing is already loud and heavy in my own ears, and my heartrate speeds up even further, knowing quite how much control Kathryn has over me, how much control I’m willing - thrilled even - to give over to her. I’d never known anything like this, before Kathryn, before this exquisite joy we’ve discovered and created together. She slides my pants down and kicks them away. “Although hot and bothered and naked is infinitely preferable.” 

“Oh no,” I put my hands firmly on her waist and attempt a look of cool bravado, the tiny tremble in my voice betraying me only slightly. “Don’t think you I’m going to let you have all the fun just like that.” I lift her up, easily, as I would a child, and grip the backs of her thighs, pulling them around my waist. “Captain,” I whisper, and when I place her down, her back hard against the kitchen counter, she unbuttons her own shirt at the same time I slide my hand into her panties. 

“Fuck,” is all I can manage to say as she arches her hips against me, begging without words. I swallow and hold her eyes as I glide my fingers inside her and immediately find a rhythm, fast and hard. I know how she wants this. “What do they do to you there?” I kiss the edges of the flush spreading across her pale chest. “How is it that you come out of such vitally important Starfleet administrative meetings, and you’re always so drenched, so perfectly ready for me?”

“Bore me.......to tears,” she moans, “that’s.....what they do.....daydreams about.....you. About this….more...please, baby….need more.” I’m well aware that Kathryn only calls me baby when her mind is already in freefall, and I’m equally aware of what exactly it is that she wants more of. But I make her come, this first time, without it. It isn’t until she’s smiling and licking her dry lips, coming down from the high, that I let her have it - that incomparable feeling, the pressure she craves from my fingers right against her g-spot. I’m more gentle this time, knowing she needs to recover a little, wanting to give her something slower and more tender, at least for now. When she comes though, it’s anything but; it is loud and fiercely intense. Her nails dig into the skin of my lower back, and my hand is drenched in her sweetness. For now, I keep it exactly where it is as she swoons against me, knowing I am the one holding us both up, knowing that Kathryn’s legs are little more than jelly, that the blood must still be roaring deafeningly in her ears. She’s like a beautiful, light-headed and delirious ragdoll in my arms by the time I shift the heel of my hand minutely, pressing it ever so carefully against her clit. 

“I don’t.....know...........if I can….another one…” her struggle to get each word out is delicious to witness.

“That is a lie, pure and simple,” she gasps as I whisper into her ear, her muscles already starting to tighten again around my fingers. “You know as well as I do that, if we both want, I can hold you right here and keep making you come for the rest of the day. And half the night.” This is something else entirely novel over the last five years, and fantastically unexpected - this almost frightening desire, the fact that my physical need for Kathryn never ebbs. That, if anything, it only increases with every day we spend together. 

She grips my wrist, hard, and holds it in place. I'm surprised, as always, and deeply impressed at how she flips the tables so easily, at how she reclaims the power in the most unlikely of moments. At how she moves nothing but her hips, never releasing her tight hold on my own hand, using it exactly how she wants to, making me suffer the elegant torture of having to watch. And at how she knows, completely, how skilfully she can take both of us over the edge like this - not even needing to touch me, as much as I'm desperate now for her to do so.

We both come, almost simultaneously, I know she really can't take any more - at least for a while. I hold her face to mine, the tips of our noses touching. Her eyes are calmer now, less wild. 

"Sorry," she says, even though I shake my head at the apology. "Sometimes I still think, even after all this time…" She kisses me with a ferocity that makes my body seem to forget that I've just had a stunningly satisfying orgasm. "....I think I'll come home and you won't be here. That it'll all turn out to have been a dream."

A mingled wave of profound love and sharp arousal hits me square on. She grabs this moment of weakness to take me hand and finally succeed in getting me up the stairs. I’ve lost the power of speech, apparently, and my legs are wobbly as we reach the bedroom. “You know,” she says, pulling me down on top of her and then rolling us over to reverse the position, “Since you didn’t see fit to remove them yet, think I might leave the glasses on whilst I play with you this time.” My hands shake as I start run them over her perfect body, as I take her remaining clothes off slowly, item by item. I can sense Kathryn enjoying the effects of her teasing immensely, and her spiking arousal sends my own skyrocketing.

As I hold her face in mine and taste her lips, her tongue, the sweet, soft skin of her face and neck under my mouth. “I see,” my voice shakes too when I can speak again, the anticipation of pleasure almost overwhelming. “So that’s what we’re doing, is it?” Kathryn’s eyes are wide and full of want as she leans down to claim my lips again, this time gently and with a tenderness that melts my insides. 


	27. Deanna - 2409

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All's well that ends well. All's very well. And, true to current form, I did have to let my lovely Deanna have the last word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, looks like we're done here. I wonder if my writer brain is going to have a break or if ideas are going to keep plaguing me at odd moments. We wait to see with baited breath 😊 I'm not saying I realised, on re-read and edit, that I may have accidentally set myself up for a Raffi/Deanna sequel but....oops? (Sorry not sorry 🤣)
> 
> Listen if you read and/or re-read stories on here, or read and bookmark, read and send kudos or if you truly do the work of the angels and *read and comment* then I owe you more THANK YOUs than I can ever say. You are the heart of this site and the reason writers come back again and again with more they want to share. Writing for yourself is lovely, but writing and knowing other people are getting something out if it is *MAGIC* That's especially true these days - 2020 has been an unrelenting sh*tshow - so stay safe gang, hold the hope and LLAP🖖🏻

Every time I see these two women I have the pleasure of calling my friends, I feel their happiness and the depth of their adoration for one another resonating deep inside of me. And I know that they’ve found it - the greatest secret of all, in any universe. The secret which is both simple and infinitely complex, hidden in plain sight: that true love is not something you stumble upon haphazardly, or magically and easily ‘find’ if you are that lucky one in a million. True love - and I know this as well as anyone - is something you build, slowly, sometimes painstakingly but, most importantly, together. Constructing the road of your own love as you go, every single day, the beauty of it something rare and precious indeed. If I wasn’t so infinitely fortunate myself, I think I could be quite envious of Katie and Seven. What they share is truly something to behold. It’s a love that lights up a room - a living thing sparkling between them. It’s there in the casual hand on a waist, the furtive kisses when they think no one is looking, the easy but inevitable way they touch each other whenever they’re close enough to. 

We arrive with wine, high spirits and daughter in tow. I realise I haven’t even asked Kathryn what we’re celebrating and, when I do, her smile could outdo a small sun. “Life,” she answers and, in one smooth movement, relieves Will of the wine, kisses me on the cheek and thrusts Kestra in the direction of what she calls ‘the other young people’. The three of them take this is their stride, despite the fact that Naomi is already a decorated Starfleet captain, and considerably more mature and experienced than I was when I first joined the Enterprise. Still, our wild girl of the woods shoots a smile back at me and her father before Elnor and Captain Wildman, off duty for once, say something that makes her collapse in a fit of laughter. 

Seven is somewhere in the kitchen as usual, cooking up a storm I gather, with Sam Wildman. When I pass them, I can't help but smile at the sight of the backs of their heads, bent together over a pan of delicious-smelling something, thick as thieves. Phoebe joins them, sporadically, in and out when she isn't refilling everyone's drinks or taking them by the elbow to charm them with some wry anecdote. We spend the day talking and eating, revelling in our hosts' hospitality, then talking and eating some more. Raffi is the only one of the guests I've never met before today. We spend a full hour or so flirting with each other so mercilessly that Will waves across the length of the garden at her, laughing and calling out: "Just let me know if you need rescuing from my wife. I'm picking up a pretty heady blend of her feelings over here!" Raffi, it transpires, does not need rescuing one little bit. 

The sun sets, the light in the sky fading slowly, and the fire pit Seven has lit crackles and glows. Will’s hand is in mine and it’s a long time since I’ve been surrounded by such deep and utter contentment, radiating off every single one of our group.

Kathryn bounces up to me, far more lively than a woman of her age has any right to be. And no one, even non-empaths, can be in any doubt as to how she and Seven keep in such good shape. The chemistry between them is divine and the looks they exchange sometimes so raw I have to look away, convinced that I've accidentally intruded on something deeply private and sacred.

"Deanna," the former Captain Janeway says, and rests her head on my shoulder. I wrap my arm around her and lay my head on top of her own. 

"Well done, Katie," I say with feeling and I don't know what I'm referring to - this gathering, the caring way her and Seven open their house to the people the love, the life they've built together these nine years. Or maybe something more profound - her decision to swallow her considerable pride and to seek Seven out again, nearly a decade ago. To throw herself, body and soul, into the unknown, into the scariest exploration and adventure of all. Kathryn doesn't know exactly what I'm referring to either, but I feel her understand exactly what I'm trying to say and, in this moment, it's enough.

She strolls back over to Seven and wraps her arms around her from behind, their bodies forming one shadow cast by the light of the fire. Tuvok catches my eye across the flames and I know I'm beaming with my obvious happiness for these two women I hold as close as family. There is a minute, almost imperceptible twitch in his face but I don't need even to see it. Vulcan as he is, I can sense the warmth of his invisible smile as surely as if it were my own. 


End file.
